Writing as an 18th-Century Automaton

This essay conceives artificial intelligence as a chapter in the history of writing through reconsidering the eighteenth-century automaton writer created by Jaquet Droz, a Swiss clock making workshop. As much an innovation in writing technology as it was an early example of artificial intelligence, the Jaquet Droz automaton writer reveals how artificial intelligence is a historical idea and material artifact deeply entangled with the history of writing, an embodied as well as deeply emotional form of cognitive activity and one of the oldest human technologies.