¶ Computer Asks an Original Question
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Computer Asks an Original Question:
“The other-- diametric-- function of the computer is integration. And the probability is that the computer and its subsidiary automation will will not make man obsolete as an integrator for several million years-- possibly never. We introduce great complexities into integration, many variables, and the interrelationships of which we wish to comprehend, and that is what the human mind is doing all the time. I can tell you quickly why the computer is never, or not for a long time, going to displace man as the integrator. The total variables that we deal with integratively all deal with a series of original questions which we have asked ourselves. Furthermore, those original questions and their discovered answers are relayed from generation to generation by chromosomic instructions which implement our appropriate, survival-accomplishing, subconscious reflexing to myriad variations of environment stimuli. We have at least two million years and possibly vast aeons more of cumulative instructions for relaying our various question-askings and constant answer-relationships. Philosophers used to say that the computers would not be able to ask an original question. But it is now some time since a computer first asked an original question when it hadn’t been told to ask an original question.”
