"Paul Preuss - Human Error" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

 A god can do it. But how, tell me, shall a man follow him through the narrow lyre? His mind is
cleavage. At the crossing of two heartways stands no temple for Apollo.

тАФRainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I:3



PROTOPHASE


Protophase.Anassemblyofprecursormolecular
structurescapableofepigenesis.
тАФHandbook of Bioelectronic Engineering
(revised),BlevinsandStorey,eds.


THE BIG MORON AND THE LITTLE MORON WERE WALKING ALONG THE EDGE OF
A CLIFF. THE BIG MORON FELL OFF. WHY DIDN'T THE LITTLE MORON?

The words glowed greenly into existence on Toby's screen: simple English sentences, sufficiently
ambiguous even at their roots, enclosing the pun like an unlaid egg. He stroked a key and leaned back to
let the machine do its thing.

He knew he had a long time to wait. Through the windows that formed one wall of the
artificial-intelligence laboratory the mustard yellow cabinets of an ancient VAX 11/780 hummed in
air-conditioned isolation, straining the hoary riddle through the algorithms of a program Toby had
dubbed, hopefully, COMMONSENSE.

As if the rigors of his own program weren't sufficient to stretch the VAX's mental capacity, Toby
time-shared the machine with three colleagues who were pursuing linguistic theories of their own.

While he waited, visions of supercomputers danced in his head, shiny new dedicated Crays shaped
like miniature Roman temples, with nothing to do but run Toby Bridgeman's programs twenty-four hours
a day. . . .

Minutes passed, and then there were new words on the screen: because he was a little more on.

Toby blinked and suppressed a giggle. The damned thing had got the joke! By George, it's got it!
Though he was more than a foot too short to do a convincing Rex Harrison imitation, Toby had a mad
urge to leap up dancing. He backed hesitantly away instead; what if the machine were only waiting for
him to turn his back before letting the proof of its perspicacity dribble into the electricity?

"I say, fellows"тАФcasually, nowтАФ"have a look at this."

Dave Droege shambled over from his paper-strewn corner to peer at Toby's screen. "The big
moron and the little moron . . . ," he mumbled, moving his lips while he read (behind his back they
called him Droege Bear). After half a sentence he stopped mumbling and just moved his lips. Finally he
stopped moving his lips; under his bushy brows his eyeballs twitched.

Lassiter and Murch appeared, one beside each of Droege's thickly upholstered shoulders. The three