Comments on: Research, New York Times, Research!

By: Johann

Johann — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:43:54 +0000

Interestingly, in German the Mechanical Turk has left his imprint in the language: The verb türken (to turk sth.) is used to indicate that something is rigged in order to decieve somebody. You could say for instance that a company’s balance sheet or a researcher’s statistics results are getürkt (“turked”). Using the word is not politically correct, however.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:01:06 +0000

“Fuentes on Fri, 24th Oct 2008 12:25 pm

Or maybe, “The Turk” is just a hint about how “Terminator Salvation” ends …

***PROBABLY SPOILER***

At the end, inside the big machine that controlls every bad robot, is a very bad human. (Get it? Turk, Chess computer, with no Intel-inside; but Dude-inside?)”

OMG–skynet is gantz!

By: Gab

Gab — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:01:00 +0000

I’m thinking Men in Black. “The little dude inside the big dude’s head.”

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:35:59 +0000

Fuentes, you have a strong theory. What we “know” is that Skynet caused a nuclear holocaust wiping out most of the human population. But what if some HUMAN actually planned that, and just used Skynet as a scapegoat? Then again, it’s hard to imagine what kind of person would want the outcome depicted in the Terminator movies. So maybe the real person behind Skynet is planning something else, but he’s about to lose control of his baby. (For this exact scenario, see Tron.)

By: Fuentes

Fuentes — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:25:33 +0000

Or maybe, “The Turk” is just a hint about how “Terminator Salvation” ends …

***PROBABLY SPOILER***

At the end, inside the big machine that controlls every bad robot, is a very bad human. (Get it? Turk, Chess computer, with no Intel-inside; but Dude-inside?)

By: Gab

Gab — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:22:36 +0000

Gr, so click on the link the article about Orientalism in general gives to the book in the opening blurb. I really should learn HTML to avoid this kind of crap.

By: Gab

Gab — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:20:41 +0000

Exoticism? 18th Century? Racism? Sounds like the modern definition of Orientalism, to me. In case you haven’t read Said’s groundbreaking book (one I had to read in THREE classes during college because of how theory-based my major was…), here’s a link to the Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)

By: fenzel

fenzel — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:57:44 +0000

If anything, wouldn’t calling the ruling machine “The Turk” in a contemporary setting cast it as aggressively secular?

By: Stokes

Stokes — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:18:54 +0000

You’re *certainly* right about the Times writer. She seems to have been looking for Al Qaeda symbolism behind The Turk, and I don’t think it’s there to be found. You might also be right about the Terminator writers. They do like to play up the whole “machines and people are kind of the same” angle. But when they decided to invoke the original Mechanical Turk, they also picked up some of its cultural baggage, whether they meant to or not. The Turk isn’t the most offensive thing in the world… but it’s not *totally* innocent either.

By: mlawski

mlawski — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:39:22 +0000

Stokes, your argument sounds perfectly valid to me. But if the Times meant that, wouldn’t they have said so? And maybe this is a stupid question, but if the Terminator writers were thinking of that, wouldn’t they have made at least one of the Terminators Middle Eastern?