D. Travers Scott: Furby Article

Retrospective Technological Mythmaking: Media

Discourses of Furby and Artificial Intelligence

Recent articles suggesting the late-1990s animatronic children’s toy, Furby, was promoted and perceived as true

Artificial Intelligence in 1998-99 are not wholly accurate. In examining 130 North American news stories, Furby

is often accurately described as only imitating machine learning. This paper analyses these articles from the

perspective of mythmaking in technological culture. In the article, I analyse the media discourses the time and

provide their historical context within North American technological culture, containing events such as the Y2K

bug, popular media representations, and the dotcom bubble. I also describe several potent emotional reactions to

Furby. However, recent media discourses suggests Furby had been perceived as a panic-inducing new technology,

similar to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast and silent cinema train effect, both of which historians have

largely discounted. I contribute evidence to the contrary, while acknowledging emotional reactions, which

are not necessarily indicators of utopian or dystopian cultural panics, but instead a technological banal. The

contemporary mythmaking about Furby is situated as comparable to Foucault’s analysis of myths of Victorian

prudishness and silence around sexuality. Retroactive mythmaking risks supporting uncritical perspectives in the

present, warranting interrogation of myths about AI as it develops and expands.

D. Travers Scott