bill@milford.UUCP (bill) (03/19/85)
<good life, let it pass> I just finished Saberhagen's anthology/novel "Berzerker Base". A berzerker, for those who haven't bumped into them,they are machines programmed to seek out sentient life and destroy it (think of the 'planet eater' in one of the more memorable Startrek shows) but typically Saberhagen made them more comic-book-like, one story had the machine playing chess against the human to wear him down. Anyway, "Bezerker Base" has stories by sharp people like Niven, Anderson, Bryant, and Saberhagen tries to mold them into one large berzerker novel. The stories are very much above-average but have been published elsewhere and Saberhagen's superstructure doesn't add very much. End of the review per se. More interesting is something common to three of the stories: The 'traditional' bezerker story has humans endangered by these invincable monomaniac machines but "man being the son-of-a-bitch that he is, always wins"; so the stories have the comic-book style alluded to above. Once again one can think of many Startrek episoles sharing this cliche. In the stories by Zalasny(sp?), Anderson, and Niven there is a different attitude toward computers (still many technical errors, the notion of berzerkers as being deadly because they're 'von Neumann machines' stands out), in that machines ( anti-bezerker bezerkers) become the heroes of the stories. First the "qwib-qwib" made by a long lost civilization to defeat the bezerkers is found. Then a group of humans capture a bezerker to reprogram to destroy other bezerkers. Lastly the Niven story has a 'Remora program' to attach itself to the bezerker software and once again reprogram the bezerkers against themselves. I'm concerned here about the effect on the unconscious popular mythology concerning machines and computers in particular. I'm sure none of the authors had any sinister motives along these lines, I'm more interested in an emerging Jungian archetype. There seems to be a definite change of direction here in the attitude toward machines. Before the message in the bezerker stories was to distrust the computer, and this message was available to the human psyche from other directions -- the 'Colossus' movie springs to mind. A very real 'anti-technological' stance of "destroy these evil machines while we still can"; also there is the comic-book attitude noted above: "man being the unconquerable son-of...." The new message might be progressive: "computers are an extension of ourselves and permit us to do things humanly impossible", but perhaps there might be a more subtle message coming into the human psyche: "You are powerless against these machines, so make the adaptation to the friendliest ones around, THEY are your only hope" One can feel this message in Reagan's Starwars defense: "man is totally powerless against weapons, so make new, stronger ones to protect us automatically." In religious terms, the direction has changed from "the machine as self-appointed deity" to "the machine as the true messiah". While moving away from a bad mythology of "machine as evil unknown" is there an equally bad mythology emerging of "machine as benign despot?" Have these mythological stances emerged elsewhere in the culture? The first definitely has throughout the fifties and sixties; with Lukas' SW we have a small myth of the machine as a munchkin (R2D2,etc). I cannot think of any other evidence of a messianic model of the computer but somehow I can feel it coming.
moore@ucbcad.UUCP (03/20/85)
> In the stories by Zalasny(sp?), Anderson, and Niven there is a > different attitude toward computers (still many technical errors, > the notion of berzerkers as being deadly because they're 'von > Neumann machines' stands out) Just a quick note in defense. There are two different concepts under the label "von Neumann machine". One is the computer architecture concept of a single processor and separate memory (ouch, an awful definition). But it is another idea of Dr. von Neumann that is being referred to above, an idea most recently referred to in 2010. Basically if you wish to a job of arbitrary size, such as transform all of Jupiter, design a self-replicating machine that can also do the job. This way you personally build one machine, and then sit back and let the wonders of exponential growth increase the numbers of machines until you have enough to complete the job at hand. Of course you need raw materials, but for terra-forming or planet-wrecking the raw materials are part of the task. Peter Moore moore@Berkeley ucbvax!moore