jon@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Jon Jacky) (03/16/87)
Eric Sandberg-Diment's regular column in the business section of the NEW YORK TIMES, called "The Executive Computer", this Sunday (3/15/87, p. F18, National Edition) reviews two popular books on computing: Grant Fjermdahl's THE TOMORROW MAKERS and Theodore Roszak's THE CULT OF INFORMATION (he criticizes both as being extreme views). At the end, Sandberg-Diment adds: The artificial intelligence community and, in fact, the entire computer cabal are nevertheless trying to mislead us into accepting the notion that the difference between the "mind" of the computer and the mind of man is merely a matter of degree, and that not only will this difference be eliminated in short order, but soon people will rank second to computers in their cognitive abilities and responsiveness. In contemplating this thesis, the article "Computer system reliability and nuclear war," by Alan Borning in the February 1987 issue of Communications of the ACM ($12 from the ACM, Order Dept., POB 64145, Baltimore, MD 21264) is must reading. Published in a journal not normally decipherable by the average individual, it is probably the clearest essay to date on why the Strategic Defense Initiative is both inevitable and doomed to failure. Here is an instance where information filtering cannot be gainsaid, for there is no way the nonspecialist could successfully draw on the 140-plus sources the author used as background for his thesis. The article is also one that leaves the reader with a sense of fatalism, along with perhaps an unspoken addendum to Samuel Johnson's observation that "the future is purchased by the present" -- how expensive it all will be in terms of humanity. At a time when there is a very real danger of our subjugating ourselves to machines to an extent far greater than already realized, readings such as these may well be all that keep our minds from becoming irreversibly enslaved." -Jonathan Jacky University of Washington