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

tell you that thoughts move through our hardware in patterns that are analogous
to weather. Sometimes an information structure builds up like a tropical
depression. If conditions are right, it becomes a hurricane. The processor
continues to work, but at greatly reduced efficiency until the storm passes. So
we're blacked out sometimes. We can't talk to . . ." He paused, looking at
Bierley, sort of wincing, ". . . to TOS, until the hurricane has spent its
energy."

"You don't like the name," I said in Richardson's office.

Richardson snorted. "The Other Side." He leaned back in his chair. "You're right
about the money, though. He charms the bucks out of Congress, and that's not
easy these days."

On the tape, I was telling the reporters about the warning lights I had rigged
in the I/O room: They ran up a scale from Small Craft Advisory to Gale Warning
to Hurricane, with the appropriate nautical flags painted onto the display. I
had hoped for a bigger laugh than I got.

"Can we interview the computer?" a reporter asked.

I had started to say something about how the I/O wasn't up to that yet, but that
TOS itself was helping to design an appropriate interface to make itself as easy
to talk to as any human being.

Bierley's image stepped forward in front of mine. "TOS is not a computer," he
said."Let's make this clear. TOS is an information structure for machine
intelligence. TOS is interfaced with computers, can access and manipulate
digital data, but this is an analog machine. Eventually, it will be a repository
for human consciousness. If you want another name for it, you could call it a
Mind Bank."

"No one gets it," Richardson said, "and this press conference isn't going to
help." He looked at me. "You don't get it, do you, Maas?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Trying to synthesize self-awareness is an interesting project. And putting
human consciousness into a box would be a neat trick, instructive. I mean, I'm
all for trying even if we fail. I expect to fail. Even if we succeed, even if we
find a technical answer, it begs the bigger question."

"Which is?"

"What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? Until you get a
satisfactory answer to that, then what's the point of trying to live forever?"

"The point is that I don't want to die!" Then more quietly, I said, "Do you?"

Richardson didn't look at me. He picked up the Indian statue from his desk and