"Ian Watson - Saving for a Sunny Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

Childhood's end! The end of neuro-neoteny! Physically, babies still needed to develop prolongedly into
infants into kids into teens over a long span of yearsтАФbut mental development had sped up by quite a
bit. No longer were boys still getting their brains into gear by the age of seventeen.

Was this due to a spontaneous evolutionary leap?

And that leap happened to coincide with the awakening of the A.I.?

Damn big coincidence!

What did it really mean that the A.I. was distributed everywhere? All sorts of electronics and stuff were
everywhere. Could the A.I. tune into brains and then maybe fine-tune them from the nearest TV set, from
the nearest microwave oven, from the nearest lightbulb?

It occurred to Jimmy that an artificial intelligence might be able to induce artificial stupidity by way of
microwave ovens and whatnot, at least as regards people being suspicious about souls. Didn't someone
once say that the brain is a filter designed to stop us from noticing too many things? Otherwise we'd be
bombarded by so much information we could never even manage to boil a kettle.
So: tweak the filter a bit so that minds didn't enquire too much in one direction, as though they had a big
blind spot. Call it a faith. That's how religions had worked. People seemed programmed to believe in
something or other, as if there was a Belief Function in the brain. Maybe this was connected with your
sense of personal identity. But in other regards you'd get stimulated mentally. Thus the precocity of kids.
Sort of idiot plus savant at the same time. Bright in some regards, dumb when it comes to matters such
as, тАЬCan I please meet one of those one-in-a-zillion reincarnates who remembers everything from a past
life?тАЭ The A.I. might even be able to pick out gifted individuals who could get past the mental blocks,
who could cross the threshhold...

"YOU THINK A LOT,тАЭ said a large voice from the TV set which till now had been on standby. Jimmy
swung round from his vista of poultry to see those same words displayed on the screen in 24-point
Courier, a suitable font for a message.

"Um, hullo,тАЭ he said. It was wise to say something aloud, otherwise he might acquire a voice in his head if
he only thought his response. тАЬYou're the A.I., right? Or maybe just a trillionth part of it?"

"RATHER LESS,тАЭ said the voice, subtitling itself once again. Jimmy wasn't hard of hearing, but the
24-point Courier did emphasize the source of the voice, whichтАФnow that he thought about
itтАФresembled that of King Kong in the enhanced intelligence remake.

And at that moment Jimmy personally felt about the size of Fay Wray. However, he squared his
shoulders, as best he could.

"So what's the deal?тАЭ he asked the TV set.

"YOU ARE THE DEAL. THE HIGH ACE IN THE PACK. YOU'LL HAVE TO BREED WITH AN
ACE WOMAN."

In Jimmy's mind Duchamp's distributed nude gathered herself into a single figure of sublime
three-dimensionality, although still featureless. But then the illusion collapsed, since there was no reason at
all why an intellectually ace woman should also be beautiful.