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

could, turning the more aggressive queries in on themselves. Wasn't this a
premature announcement of a breakthrough bringing hope to millions? Would
Bierley himself turn a profit from this conquest of humanity's oldest and
cruelest foe? Would he himself be among the first to enter the possibly
hazardous territory of eternity to make sure it was safe for others?

Then he was introducing us, telling the reporters about my genius for hardware
and Richardson's for analog information theory. We had sixty technicians and
research assistants working with us, but BierIey made it sound like a two-man
show. In some ways, it was. Neither of us could be replaced, not if you wanted
the same synergy.

"Two great minds in a race for immortality," Bierley said, and then he gave them
a version of what I'd told Bierley myself: Richardson was always two steps ahead
of my designs, seeing applications that exceeded my intentions, making me run to
keep up with him and propose new structures that would then propel him another
two steps beyond me. I'd never worked with anyone who stimulated me in that way,
who made me leap and stretch. It felt like flying.

What Bierley didn't say was that often we'd dash from thought to thought and
finally look down to see empty air beneath us. Usually we discovered
impracticalities in the wilder things we dreamed up together. Only rarely did we
find ourselves standing breathless on solid ground, looking back at the flawless
bridge we had just built. Of course, when that happened, it was magnificent.

It also frightened me. I worried that Richardson was indispensable, that after
making those conceptual leaps with him, I could never go back to my solitary
plodding or to working with minds less electric than his. All minds were less
electric than his, at least when he was at his best. The only difficulty was
keeping him from straying into the Big Questions.

The camera had pulled back, and Richardson and I both looked rumpled and plain
next to Bierley's polish. On screen I stammered and adjusted my glasses as I
answered a question.

Richardson was no longer watching the press conference video, but had shifted
his gaze to the flatscreen on his office wall. It showed a weather satellite
image of the western hemisphere, time lapsed so that the last 72 hours rolled by
in three minutes. It was always running in Richardson's office, the only
decoration there, unless you counted that little statue, the souvenir from India
that he kept on his desk.

On the press conference tape, Richardson was answering a question. "We don't
have any idea how we'd actually get a person's consciousness into the machine,"
he admitted. "We haven't even perfected the artificial mind that we've built.
There's one significant glitch that keeps shutting us down for hours at a time."

At that point, Bierley's smile looked forced, but only for an instant.

"The best way to explain the problem," the recorded Richardson continued, "is to