Butler

Butler's autograph presentation inscription on the title page.

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A: London, England, United Kingdom

In his Novel "Erewhon" Samuel Butler Describes Artificial Consciousness

1872
First edition of Erewhon.

First edition of Erewhon.

In 1872 Erewhon: or, Over the Range, a satirical utopian novel by the English writer Samuel Butler, was published anonymously in London. A notable aspect of this satire on aspects of Victorian society, expanded from letters that Butler originally published in the New Zealand newspaper, The Press, was that Erewhonians believed that machines were potentially dangerous and that Erewhonian society had undergone a revolution that destroyed most mechanical inventions. In the section of Butler's satire called "The Book of the Machines" Butler appears to have imagined the possiblity of machine consciousness, or artificial consciousness, and that machines could replicate themselves

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