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Jonathan Swift

writer · 5 mentions across 2 readings

In this course

Swift's *Gulliver's Travels* furnishes the course with a satirical precedent for mechanized knowledge production—specifically the absurdist "engine" in Laputa that promises to generate complete understanding through brute computational recombination of text fragments. The readings invoke Swift's 1726 fiction as a cautionary genealogy for contemporary AI systems that claim to produce knowledge or meaning through algorithmic assembly, exposing the longstanding fantasy that enough data processing and formal operations can substitute for genuine understanding.

Mentioned in 2 readings

Appears alongside

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Pandaemonium Architecture 6.0 — ATEK-639/439 — Fall 2025