impossible to
listen without idea that
senses are deceived
No matter how familiar a person may be with modern machinery and its wonderful performances, or how clear in his mind the principle underlying this strange device may be, it is impossible to listen to the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are deceiving him.
So reads an article in in the journal, Scientific American.
The date of the article is December 22, 1877.
The subject of the article?
The article was written after an in office demonstration of Thomas A. Edison’s first phonograph.
As the Scientific American, it was a ” …simple little contrivance” as the machine itself is still working, or at least it was when Alistair Cooke demonstrated it in his America: A Personal History of the United States (which was produced in 1976 … this video itself is 50 years … how did that happen??)
The AI of its day and the phonograph inspired some of the same fears.
It is already possible by ingenious optical contrivances to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices, and it would be difficult to carry the Illusion of real presence much further.
The sky is falling … again.
Lets run and tell the King.
PS: Thinking of Kings and those who want to be, this article also had a warning for its day and today.
“The witness“, states the article, “in court will find his own testimony repeated by machine confronting him on cross examination.”
No Haiku For You 