h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i have to disagree with your categorisation of computers as unbeings - they must surely reside in some sort of grey area between the two. Not to get into any heavy discussions about artificial intellignece and all that stuff, but the organic properties of the internet surely warrant some sort of 'being' to machinery (even if it isn't sentient).

This sort of doesn't get across what I'm trying to say - it's the evolutionists approach to the World Wide Web (and internet in general I guess) that makes me think of it as organic - although in terms of material technology it isn't, of course)

I suppose that in some distant future, the internet could become a "being" unto itself, capable of "sentient" thought. This was the idea of Arthur C. Clarke's 1965 short story, "Dial F For Frankenstein." The premise was simply that all the "switches" in the global telecommunications network could function like the neurons of a brain, and thus take control of traffic lights and airplanes, via the already complicated telephone system.

However, you are implying that your computer is not, or will not, be an "unbeing" if the world wide web developes sentiency. If and when this happens, the world wide web will become the sum of its parts--but not the other way around. Your computer will not become a sentient being simply because it is an element of one. Dihydrogen monoxide, an inorganic substance that makes up seventy percent of the human body, does not become organic because it is a major component within a sentient being. The neurons in my brain, though part of a rather powerful lump of gray sentiency, are individually as effective at independent thought as a aardvark is at completing the New York Times crossword puzzle.

Therefore, your computer, as well as mine, is only a part--a replaceable part at that, if you are sitting at an ancient P120 like I am. Your computer is a mere tool, the internet is a rather noisy stage, and I am out of here!

No reply in over a week. Does this mean that this discussion is at an end?

No, sorry - I think I was a bit stunned by the complexity of your last response - heady stuff.

Yes I understand you about parts of the whole being replaceable and still of an unsentient(?) nature. And how much of the 'organic' development of the internet will always be human intervention... I can imageinti as an organism - a series of 'nerural' noeds sending electronic messages across a vast and complex network - but how much of this will be self-determined by the system?

Oh dear this is all getting a bit too tricky for me.

Have you read any William Gibson? I love his imagery of the matrix/network as being both a 'physical' space where human activity and interactivity can occur - and also a product of some sort of sentient computer being.

I think I'm rambling.

Although I have not read any Gibson, I am familiar with other authors in the cyberpunk genre who decend from his Neuromancer. Though they do bring up interesting--brilliant--analogies between humans and their relations to machines, much of their philosophical components are designed for fiction. Fiction, even true science finction (as opposed to sci-fi) is driven by drama, and drama by characters. What better antagonist than a machine to foil technocratic protagonists.

Personally, I do find sociological science fiction more dangerous, as well as more plausible. I would draw my analogy of future computers to the present state of beuracracy. In Kafka, his protagonists are swallowed up by societal constructs that--though composed of hundreds of human beings--are entirely inhuman. What is scarier: a computer with a conscience or a society that has gone mad? Even when humans have devised vast networks of computers that can create spontaneous thought, it will still fall on society to choose submission to the computers' results, or have the wisdom to look elsewhere for advice.

When it comes down to it, are not humans just component parts of a much greater organism: society. Imagine each individual, plodding away at defining their own personality, only to become a more integral part of the "colony." A "queen" may look different than a "worker" or a "soldier," but her value to the collective is infinitely more. How can she be considered a non-conformist, when she conforms so exactingly to her role.

Maybe our need to create and/or destroy an omnipotent computer goes back to our need to be saved and/or punished. Is the Holy Machine the savior or the anti-christ? Contrary to popular belief, dualism does exist in western society, secretly handed down from Zoroastrianism, to Mithraism, to Christianity. Plus, isn't the computer as a god a great analogy. We created the gods in our own image, and now we have created the computer as well (i.e. homonid-like robots).

In the end though, why can't the computer just be another tool like the flint hand axe, or the plow, or the internal combustion engine? Does it have to be another atomic bomb?

The biggest technology missing bit on my personal computer is the lack of one of those groovy mid 1950s green printers eye shields.

My computer and I want to sit outdoors smelling the roses together whilst tapping hands and reading love letters.

My old computer made an excellent planterbox. Ah, what fragrant lupins we are having this year...

The heat generated by a computer would suggest they would be an excellent container to grow dope in winter