"John Henry?" Not quite... · 4:26am Feb 18th, 2016
Rather than do a big ol' comment response to the latest chapter, "Apple Computer, Part 1," I thought I'd just do a blog post to address a common line of commentary/inquiry/criticism. If you haven't read that far, you might not want to read this.
So the first chapter of the new arc has gone up and I'm already seeing a lot of great comments and discussion from the readers, which is always great. 
But one thing has come up quite a bit and I wanted to just address it briefly. Though not everyone has used the exact same term, a lot of folks have wondered if it's a retelling of...
The story, which may be merely legend or perhaps may be real, is of a steel-driving man working for the railroad. His prowess and strength was such that he couldn't be matched. As one retelling goes...
[O]ne day a salesman came along to the camp. He had a steam-powered drill and claimed it could out-drill any man. Well, they set up a contest then and there between John Henry and that there drill. The foreman ran that newfangled steam-drill. John Henry, he just pulled out two 20-pound hammers, one in each hand. They drilled and drilled, dust rising everywhere. The men were howling and cheering. At the end of 35 minutes, John Henry had drilled two seven foot holes - a total of fourteen feet, while the steam drill had only drilled one nine-foot hole.
John Henry held up his hammers in triumph! The men shouted and cheered. The noise was so loud, it took a moment for the men to realize that John Henry was tottering. Exhausted, the mighty man crashed to the ground, the hammer's rolling from his grasp. The crowd went silent as the foreman rushed to his side. But it was too late. A blood vessel had burst in his brain. The greatest driller in the C&O Railroad was dead.
This is one of the ur-examples for "man vs machine" stories, and a favorite of unionists and Luddites alike. A lot of folks have drawn comparisons to Applejack's building conflict and competitiveness with Turing Test to the folktale and to the already-been-done pony version, "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000."
Honest to goodness, I found this image while looking up John Henry; I am not even kidding.
As entertaining as that episode was, it's not much of a John Henry retelling mainly because of the huge number of plot holes in it. (And I don't mean Flim and Flam.) But anyway, I am getting waaaay off track.
Is this building up to a John Henry-style race/competition? No, because this story already did that with Rainbow Dash.
Little-known fact: the working title for the Rainbow Dash arc was, you guessed it, "John Henry." That arc was, at least initially, about the mare proving herself against a machine only to eventually turn the concept around and show that the machine was trying to prove itself against the mare. The reason I changed the name before publishing was that I didn't want to include a direct human reference and I couldn't think of a pony pun-name that didn't sound stupid as a chapter. (Seriously, what was I going to go with? "John Horsey?" I'll pass.)
This current arc isn't about competition. When Applejack tries to start bucking faster to keep up with Turing Test's pace, Big Mac shows her that Turing Test is even further ahead and even faster than she realized. The "competition" was over before it had even begun.
So, you might ask, what's this arc actually about? What's really eating Applejack?
...You'll see. 
Well... at least it's not John Cena.
I'm guessing it's more related to Celestia's original worry of machines taking over farm work, or at least Applejack obsessing about it. Probably linked a little to "Applebuck Season" as well.
I was thinking more of Paul Bunyan while reading the chapter than John Henry.(never heard of him till today) I was also thinking of the whole man vs. machine thing but like you said, you already did that with Dash so I didn't bring it up.
To my annoyance, there's a particular interpretation of the John Henry story that I remember the existence but not the content of. It addressed, I remember, my main criticism of the story, that being that, certainly, John Henry won that one contest, but a: he died doing it and b: he was the very best humanity had to offer. The steam drill, meanwhile, could keep going past his death until it matched his results. If it broke down, it could be repaired. And it could be mass produced. This seems a pretty big hole in the story for me, so, as I said, I'm rather annoyed that I'm not recalling the explanation of how it isn't.
Anyway, though, thanks for the commentary on that interpretation of the chapter. :)
Oh, and bonus semi-random link:
The Jawn Henry Locomotive
Interesting take on it... I've always seen the "John Henry" tale as a rebuttal to any Luddite thinking.
Sort of... "Setting yourself against innovation is likely to get you dead."
3761975 at least it's not John Henry Eden
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/c/c9/Presidente_Ed%C3%A9n.png/revision/latest?cb=20090617212250&path-prefix=es
Well, Applejack derives satisfaction from doing her work.
If, at the end of a day, she can look back at the trees she's bucked, and say "I did good work today and got a lot done", she's happy with herself.
If her muscles ache a bit because of it, it only means she pushed herself and worked extra hard, and that only serves to make her more satisfied with her accomplishment.
Over the course of her life, one could say she has come to associate the strain of work with accomplishment.
Hypothetically, if somepony like, say, Discord, gave her, and her alone, the ability to just say "Apples, come to me!" and they all just came off of the trees and flew neatly into the baskets, all at once? I don't think she'd take that.
It would get the job done, instantly. But it would not give her any satisfaction. AJ would probably say "It's dishonest!".
Now, with Turing Test, on the other hoof, we're opening a whole different can of worms.
Not only can Turing Test outpace AJ on her first day - which stabs at her pride and competitive nature, obviously.
But also, she would feel her work is somehow worth... less. It means she's putting in all the effort, but she's not gaining any satisfaction.
Like typing away at a story, but suddenly not enjoying it anymore, only doing it to "get it done".
Except, there's also the lingering fear of machines - even if not Turing herself, but machines in general - taking over farm work, simply by making regular ponies inefficient by comparison.
So AJ is afraid in more than one way - that she'll become obsolete, that the joy of her work will be taken away from her, AND that her farm - and way of life for farmers everywhere, meaning "tradition" and "values" - will suffer for it.
THAT is going through the back of her mind, I guess.
. . .
And, oddly enough, this is the second time I comment on this story, and AGAIN on the ethical dilemma of machine vs man... err, pardon, horse.
I'm not normally this focused on ethical topics, I swear!
...But that aside, I have a huuuuuge backlog of things I should have and wanted to comment on [EDIT] in this story [/EDIT], but they just sort-of kept piling up until there was a traffic jam.
I'll try to be less binary about it.
(= say everything or say nothing at all)
Okay, you're still going to at least mention Flim and Flam though right?
What is truly getting AJ down is that she feels that she NEEDS to be the one doing the work.
What is it with ponies not remembering their lessons? Asking for help is NOT weakness. It is a sign of intelligence that you know your limits before hitting them in a painful or embarrassing manner.
3762260
This is actually the very same reason why Celestia did her best to halt the advancement of technology in Equestria; she was afraid that ponies and their talents would become worthless compared to what a machine could do. I am looking forward to the rest of the arc simply because I would like to know how this mindset is going to be handled.