kottke.org

...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.

The real Turing test

I had a number of practicing writers in mind when I started using the word "paleoblogging," including Matt Novak of Paleo-Future. Matt's particularly good at pulling images and advertisements from old periodicals and ephemera -- stuff that doesn't even usually get digitally indexed -- that taken together reveal a kind of historical unconscious of old ideas and fears about the future.

Here's a good one (from the archives, naturally) of a 1930 ad warning of the death of the music industry at the hands of guitar-playing robots.

As usual, there's an additional layer of allegory here -- the robots are just a convenient stand-in for "canned," piped-in music from gramophone records (or maybe even the radio, I don't know) in theaters. Just remember: even if they play guitar, write really sensitive songs, and seem like they can express what you've always thought but just couldn't find the words to say, don't date robots!

By Tim Carmody    Aug 13, 2010 at 03:53 pm    Matt Novak   music   Paleo-Future

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