Now that the discussion has been motivated, we must touch earth again. Motivation is not enough; there must also be likelihood. After all, one could paint equally gorgeous futures on the basis of levitation, mental telepathy, time travel, space warp, or old-fashioned Divine Intervention. I doubt that you could get a practical man interested; the odds aren't right. So why, among all the wishful fantasies with which escapists amuse themselves, get urgent about robots -- much less about the prospect of transplanting human beings into them?
What's special about the robots, and about the larger vision they encourage, is that they are suggested by a considerable amount of work in progress -- not by wishful thinking alone. Granted, you have to be fairly suggestible; let's call it "creative" in this instance. You have to round up the relevant facts, get them to pose for a family photo, make a slide of it, and then project it upon an enormous screen (say, upon the firmament above). It then casts an image resembling what I have described -- and if I have filled in missing details with a blithe hand, my guesses are at least as plausible as the opposites of my guesses.
Let me show you what I mean.
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Smarts and the Computer: Can Programming Shade Into Intelligence? |
| One Small Stretch for an Imagination -- One Giant Flash Across the Landscape. |
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