"Bruce Holland Rogers - Lifeboat On A Burning Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

believed.

In Richardson's office, he and I watched a playback of Bierley's press
conference. It had been our press conference, too, but we hadn't answered many
questions. Even Richardson understood the importance of leaving that to Bierley.

"A multi-cameral multi-phasic analog information processor," Bierley said again
on the screen, "but we prefer to call it TOS." He smiled warmly. "The Other
Side."

From behind his desk, Richardson grumbled, "God. He makes what we've done sound
like a seance."

"Come on," I said. "It's the whole point."

"Are you really so hot to live forever as a machine consciousness, if, fantasy
of fantasies, it turns out to be possible?"

"Yes."

"Your problem," he said, pointing a finger, "is that you're too damned scared of
death to be curious about it. That's not a very scientific attitude."

I almost told him he'd feel differently in another twenty years, but then I
didn't. It might not be true. Since I had a/ways seen death as the enemy, it was
possible that someone like Richardson never would.

"Meanwhile," Richardson continued, "we've made a significant leap in machine
intelligence. Isn't that worthy of attention in its own right without pretending
that it's a step toward a synthesized afterlife?"

On the screen, Bierley was saying, "Of all the frontiers humanity has
challenged, death was the one we least expected to conquer."

"As if, Christ, as if we'd already done it!"

Bierley peered out from the screen. He had allowed only one video camera for the
conference so that he'd know when he was looking his viewers in the eye. "Some
of you watching now will never die. That's the promise of this research.
Pioneers of the infinite! Who doesn't long to see the march of the generations?
What will my grandchild's grandchildren belike? What lies ahead in one hundred
years? A thousand? A million?" After a pause and another grandfatherly smile, a
whisper: "Some will live to know."

Richardson blew a raspberry at the screen.

"All right," I admitted. "He oversells. But that's Bierley. Everything he says
is for effect, and the effect is funding!"

On the screen, the silver-haired Bierley was rephrasing questions as only he