Hour of Letdown (1954) by E.B. White

Authors

Gareth B. Matthews, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Files

Description

A man came into a New York bar with a big, ugly-looking machine and ordered two drinks. The man downed his own drink, then he poured the second whiskey into a small vent in the machine. The bartender ordered the man to remove the machine from his bar, but the man refused, explaining that the machine needed to be able to “let down,” having just won a chess tournament. Nowadays, many of us spend important parts of our lives “interacting” with computer programs. E.B. White’s whimsical story from his 1954 collection The Second Tree from the Corner suggests is that there will always be a categorical difference between human beings and the cleverest robots, unless someday there is a robot who needs to let down in something more than a metaphorical sense.

Publication Date

1994

Publisher

Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children

City

Montclair

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence, persons, robots, soceity

Disciplines

Education | Philosophy

Comments

This review was first published in Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 12(1): 1, 1994.

Recommended Citation

Matthews, Gareth B., "Hour of Letdown (1954) by E.B. White" (1994). Young Adult Books. 2.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/iapc_thinkingstories_youngadult/2