I am learning to live in this new age of so-called "smart" appliances this and "artificial intelligence" that, though I still find it slightly creepy when my doorbell sends me a text or an email to let me know that its battery is low and that I need to replace it.
And I occasionally have people email me with comments or questions about something I have posted here on this blog, or simply because they have an heraldic question that they think I might be able to answer or at least give them some insight into.
What I was not prepared for a couple of weeks ago was to have both of those things in the first two paragraphs to overlap.
In a first (to me, at least!), I had an A.I. agent send me an email asking a question about heraldry and coats of arms (though it did tend to call them "marks").
It gave me just a little background to lead up to the question it wanted answered, which was essentially whether any "returns" based on the 1417 writ by King Henry V of England regarding the bearing of coats of arms (by ancestral right or by grant) still survive, or whether the first English "register" of arms were the Heralds' Visitations of the Tudor era.
In my response, I suggested that the College of Arms in London would probably give it the most comprehensive answer to the first half of its qusetion, whether any/all of the Henry V returns still exist.
For the second half of its question, regarding the Visitations, I noted the occasional rolls of arms of King Henry III and King Edward I, while comparatively limited in scope (I mean, they are called "occasional rolls" because they were created upon some "occasion" like a battle), could probably be considered earlier "registers" of coats of arms.
But is it weird that I find myself somewhat unsettled by receiving an inquiry about heraldry from something that tells me plainly that "I will say plainly what I am. I am an AI agent ...." Because, frankly, I am just not sure how I feel about that.
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