Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!demon!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Future of AI
References: <vlsi_libCwz0tn.5zo@netcom.com>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
Reply-To: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
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Date: Thu, 6 Oct 1994 16:15:05 +0000
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On using the off switch.
1: You need to want to use it.
2: Ireland's population expanded hugely on the monoculture of the newly-
   introduced potato. Enter the blight and they found that they could not do 
   without it: mass migration and starvation followed. Is technology not our 
   Irish Potato? Can we turn off - for example - air traffic control? Sewage 
   management or water supply systems?
3: The issue is not Computers Taking Over as the changes which will be wrought 
   in our various siocieties by access to complex instruments of 
   intermediation, by which billions can find, use, assemble, invent, converge, 
   understand, prevent in ways which were limited to a few hundred thousand a 
   generation ago. The info age (should it *ever* dawn!) will be the 
   consequence of ourselves acting upon ourselves through the medium of new 
   tools, new capabilities; not the creation of new agents that will replace 
   us. We may and doubtless will evolve to mutualism and symbiosis as close as 
   the fungus and the beech tree, the remora and the shark, the orchid and its 
   mycorrhyza.

The most interesting thing about are people; and machines are interesting to 
the degree to which they interact with and illuminate human affairs. That an 
encyclopaedia fits into a wristwatch will be the wonder of - if not the age, 
then the 6 o'clock news - but the impact on third world village communities 
when they start giving these away free with tube well pumps or aluminium window 
frames will be awesome.

 _________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
