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A comment on The Original AI Doomer: Dr. Norbert Weiner.

Re:The Original AI Doomer: Dr. Norbert Weiner by ricopags on Saturday June 03, 2023 @05:58PM (#36180914)
E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops[0] is probably the most prescient and early tale I've seen foretelling the outcome of Verilio's Pure War and Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. It's worth a read.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

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Re:The Original AI Doomer: Dr. Norbert Weiner by prolapso on Saturday June 03, 2023 @06:15PM (#36181040)
I've been meaning to read it ever since I saw this quote, which I found quite beautiful and sad:

The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.

- The Machine Stops (1909)

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Re:The Original AI Doomer: Dr. Norbert Weiner by ricopags on Saturday June 03, 2023 @08:00PM (#36181705)
It's a short, quick read. It's honestly shocking it could be written in 1909. True imagination.

I think a nice balancing title [equally short] would be Marc Steigler's Gentle Seduction[0] to which I was first introduced in a "Socrates Cafe" philosophical discussion on technological progression and its attendant erosion of magic and wonder.

[0]http://skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html

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