Iron Man : comments [A Bug's Life]

Hmmm. My guess is as follows.

Before the Division of Informatics, there were several outposts of the Department of AI and the Department of Cognitive Science. Some parts of these were (and as far as I'm aware, still are) on Buccleuch Place. I've certainly been to CISA seminars on Buccleuch Place (before they moved to Appleton), and my lectureship seminar was there, back in 2003.

Edinburgh has a strong history in robotics, possibly the strongest in the UK. Their best-known early robots were Freddy and Freddy II. It's entirely possible that these two robots were in the basement of one of the houses on Buccleuch Place, and that the plaque commemorates them; Freddy II was built around 1973, so the lyric is near-contemporary.

[ the robotics part of DAI later moved to Forrest Hill, but that was in the late 1980s/early 1990s, so likely irrelevant to this hypothesis ]

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I'd ask Alan Bundy - d you know him??

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Not especially well. I'll ask Austin Tate, who I know rather better.

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Nice theory, but as far as I know (ex AI student and current Informatics staff member) AI used to be based in Hope Park Square, not Buccleuch Place. Also, the Adam Ferguson Building is entirely the wrong bit of Buccleuch Place to be associated with the Cognitive Science people who are the Buccleuch Place bit of Informatics - they're at the other end in numbers 1-6. And they're much more into computational linguistics anyway rather than AI.
Also the robotics bit of AI had already been in Forrest Hill for years and years when I studied AI there in the early 80s. In the 70s lots of the AI academics in FH were wild-haired hippy types and they made a very fetching contrast to the smartly-dressed army types with whom they shared the building.

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I thought that AI had moved from Hope Park Square by the early 70s, though I'm not sure where it moved to (that is, I don't know if there was an intermediate address between HPS and South Bridge). I also hadn't realised how long AI had been in FH - I did the AI MSc in 96, just after Jim Howe retired, and the department still spoke about the move to FH as though it was a recent event!

You're right about *where* on Buccleuch Place, though. When Bridget said 'behind the Adam Ferguson building', I'd assumed she was describing the position of Buccleuch Place, and not the location of the plaque within BP.

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AI had certainly expanded from Hope Park Square by then I think, but it still had a presence there in the 80s because that's where the AI library was in the early 80s, and various people had offices there.
AI moved into more and more of FH progressively I think - when they started there in the ?70s the army still had quite a lot of the building I think, but AI expanded and the army contracted over the years. Possibly in 96 AI had only just taken over the complete building. Then again some of our staff have been here over 40 years and probably do remember decades-old things as relatively recent events!
I don't know if there was an intermediate location though. I don't *think* so but I'm not sure.

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I was skimming and read that "Freddy II was . . commentary" [on the song]. Robots as commentary: an idea whose time has come?

and now, a hamster with a spaceship on its head

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A Bug's Life

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