YouSaid · the spoken record

David Levy

lines on the record: 54
first: 2018-11-19
most recent: 2018-11-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Artifice, imitations of nature, the God who is most involved in creating self-moving devices and automatons is Hephaestus. He was the god of blacksmithing and forging with bronze, but he was also the god of invention and technology. He was the only god with a job. He's the only one who breaks a sweat when he's working. All the other gods have lives of leisure and they are in awe of his special abilities in his forge with technology and invention. So they ask him to make them special weapons, various bubbles and contraptions for the gods. He made automatic gates for Mount Olympus that would automatically open and close when the gods or goddesses approached with their chariots. He also made a fleet of what you might call automatic butler.”
2018-11-19 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Ancient Dreams of Technology, Gods & Robots · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a critical distinction in antiquity and now if something is manufactured or fabricated and not reproduced biologically. That is the dividing line between real and natural human and non human, animate and inanimate.”
2018-11-19 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Ancient Dreams of Technology, Gods & Robots · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of philosophers of science have doubted that ancient Greeks were able to imagine automatons and self-moving devices before the technology actually existed. And my goal was to see whether those things could be thinkable long before the technology existed. You could call ancient mythology cultural dreams or ancient thought experiments. They're basically the very first science fictions before science. What I'm interested in are automatons and self-moving devices visualized in mythology about gods and heroes and humans that were described as beings that were made not born.”
2018-11-19 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Ancient Dreams of Technology, Gods & Robots · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as a folklorist and a historian of ancient science, what I'm interested in are the very first inklings of the scientific impulse in pre-scientific cultures, especially antiquity, especially ancient Greece and Rome, and associated ancient cultures. So I moved to Silicon Valley in 2006 where there's just so much advanced innovations in automatons and AI and trying to extend the lifespan and surpassing nature that I just started wondering how deep are those roots and when did those desires and actual endeavors begin? There's a lot of natural knowledge and even scientific folk knowledge, if you will, embedded in mythology. And all of my projects have been investigations into finding what's real in myths and legends.”
2018-11-19 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Ancient Dreams of Technology, Gods & Robots · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source