Above the publisher’s desk at The New York Times hangs an engraving of Manhattan in 1851 — cobblestones, low buildings, a harbor full of sails, a church spire the tallest thing on the island. Someone stood there and looked. That, it turns out, is the whole question.

Why we’re pointing you there

The Times marked its 175th anniversary this week with an essay on fifteen million “first drafts of history.” The same week, an investigation exposed a company buying real online publications, firing the writers, and filling them with machine-written articles — bylined to experts who were never born, and overseen by an editor whose age dropped from 77 to 75 in the space of three days. Intellicurean sets the two side by side and asks what a first draft is worth when no one was there to draft it.

The answer turns on a name the Times left out: Earl Caldwell, the only reporter at the Lorraine Motel when King was shot, who said afterward that you don’t see everything — you get a sliver of what came past you, and that sliver is the basis for everything. A machine can generate a flawless eyewitness account of any event. It can never have been there. This is the fourth in Intellicurean’s series on what the machine lacks — and the one with the strongest floor beneath it.

Read the full essay at Intellicurean → Essays & Reviews for the Intellectually Curious