{"id":375,"date":"2003-06-05T17:24:42","date_gmt":"2003-06-05T21:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2003\/06\/05\/the-age-of-magical-machines\/"},"modified":"2003-06-05T17:24:42","modified_gmt":"2003-06-05T21:24:42","slug":"the-age-of-magical-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2003\/06\/05\/the-age-of-magical-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"The Age of Magical Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a96'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P><FONT size=\"1\">Referring, of course, to&nbsp;the eighteenth century<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><U>On the illusion of steady progress<STRONG>:<\/STRONG><\/U><\/P><br \/>\n<P>The remarkable automata of the <STRONG>1700&#8217;s<\/STRONG> would still be considered some of the more wondrous of the world&#8217;s robots, were they in working order today.&nbsp; <A href=\"http:\/\/www.swarthmore.edu\/Humanities\/pschmid1\/essays\/pynchon\/vaucanson.html\">Vaucanson&#8217;s duck<\/A>, for instance, which moved with the nuances of a live duck and consumed food, and by various accounts swam and digested\/excreted its meals (though perhaps it only excreted predigested food, while hiding away the food it ate).&nbsp;&nbsp;<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Elaborate lifesize musical creations which looked like people and played popular tunes on real instruments &#8211; string and wind instruments, mind you &#8211; were quite popular as well.&nbsp; Nowadays one is lucky to find an AIBO with an even vaguely realistic voice.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Referring, of course, to&nbsp;the eighteenth century On the illusion of steady progress: The remarkable automata of the 1700&#8217;s would still be considered some of the more wondrous of the world&#8217;s robots, were they in working order today.&nbsp; Vaucanson&#8217;s duck, for instance, which moved with the nuances of a live duck and consumed food, and by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chain-gang"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-63","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}