Stillness & Shadows John Gardner (nice books to read .txt) 📖

“All right. All these subroutines you keep in the computer—they’re part of its methodological memory, one of many kinds of memory. In a really complicated mathematical problem you might leave the routine and enter some sub or sub-sub or sub-sub-sub routine a hundred, two hundred, a thousand times. How does one man, in a single lifetime, program them all in, you ask me? The answer is, he doesn’t—and therein lies a tale.

“It’s a community effort, like the evolution of the universe. One programmer puts in the routine for square roots. Another, another day, puts in the routine for quadratic equations. Still another, another day—and so on and so on, generation on generation. The computer’s gifts and capabilities grow. Not only mathematicians make use of it but also demographers, physicists, psychologists, chess players. The computer begins to make decisions for itself—decisions we’re not even aware that it’s making. For example: I program in simultaneous play, at random intervals, of two games simultaneously—chess and pinochle. Sooner or later the call for a chess move and a pinochle move will coincide, and the computer will have to decide, if it can, which move to make first, chess or pinochle. Does the computer jam? go crazy? As it happens, it does not. Some sociologist happens to have left in it—maybe years ago—a formula stating that chess is a game of the upper class, pinochle a game of the lower class, and another formula, or symbolic statement, to be more precise—maintaining that the lower class tends to imitate the upper: so the computer plays the chess piece first.

“Wonderful, you may say. So all the people in AI, as it’s called—artificial intelligence—are quick to yell. But it seems a little odd that we should be so quick to embrace an intelligence utterly different from our own—exclusively left-hemisphere intelligence, if you will—and an intelligence we have no way to check on. Nearly all our existing programs, and especially the largest and most important ones, are patchworks of the kind I’ve somewhat metaphorically described. They’re heuristic in the sense that their construction is based on rules of thumb—stratagems that appear to ‘work’ under most foreseen circumstances—and ad hoc mechanisms patched in from time to time. The gigantic programs that run business and industry and, above all, government have almost all been put together—one can’t even say ‘designed’—by teams of programmers whose work has been spread over many years. By the time these systems are put on line, most of the original programmers have left or turned their attentions to other pursuits. A man named Marvin Minsky’s found a very good way of expressing it: a large computer program, he says, is like an intricately connected network of courts of law, that is, of subroutines, to which evidence is submitted by other subroutines. These courts weigh (evaluate) the data given them and then transmit their judgments to still other courts. The verdicts rendered by these courts may—indeed, often do—involve decisions about what court has ‘jurisdiction’ over the intermediate results then being manipulated. The programmer thus cannot even know the path of decision making within his own program, let alone what intermediate or final results it will produce.”

“Like Darwin’s universe,” Craine said, thinking aloud.

“Yes, very much like that,” Weintraub said. “Geological-time strata—layers on layers of program evolution; chance combinations and recombinations; occasional freak occurrences, as when some teenaged computer nut interfaces his Radio Shack with the monster and starts moving things around. And above all, of course—you’re right—no Programmer, pure blind mechanical survival of the fittest.”

“Interesting, all this,” Craine said.

There was a knock on the door. It opened two inches and, the same moment, Professor Weintraub called, “Come in!”

The door opened more and an intense, wild-looking man poked his head in. His hair and beard were red, as unwashed as Craine’s and vastly more tangled. One of the lenses in his round, steel-framed glasses had a crack with Scotch tape over it. His clothes were army surplus, or maybe the real thing—patches and stripes had been torn off the arms. He was carrying, clamped under his right arm, a large messy roll of printout. “You going to lunch, Murray?” he asked, hardly noticing Craine. His voice was oddly hoarse, and he at once cleared his throat.

Professor Weintraub raised his left arm, pushed the cuff back, and looked at his watch. With a leap of guilt, Craine looked at his own. “It’s nearly quarter to three, Frank. I ate hours ago,” Weintraub said.

“Oh,” the young man said, not surprised, exactly, not even quite registering. “Oh,” he said again; then, abruptly, “Listen, I got an incredible new feature—”

“Later,” Weintraub said with a smile, raising his hand like a policeman.

“Oh, sorry,” the red-head said. Now he turned to look at Craine, his expression like that of a man looking at a chimp at the zoo. “Sorry,” he said. He gave a little wave and backed out, closing the door.

Craine said, shifting his weight forward, preparing to rise, “I hadn’t realized how late it was getting. I’ve got to run. I want to thank you, Professor Weintraub. You have no idea—”

“Don’t mention it,” Weintraub said. “I hope it helps somehow. It’s been a pleasure, actually.”

“One thing,” Craine said, on his feet now. “Who was that fellow?” He aimed a thumb at the door.

“That was Britt—Frank Britt,” Weintraub said, and gave a just perceptible headshake, perhaps embarrassment.

“He’s a programmer?”

“Very much so.” He pushed back his desk chair and got to his feet, then came around to accompany Craine out. “He’s what you might call a computer bum—very special modern breed.” He laughed.

Though it was later than he’d thought—even if he left right now he couldn’t reach Elaine Glass by quarter to three, as he’d promised—Craine hesitated. “What do they do?” he asked.

“Why, they play with computers. That’s all they live for.” He made a vague, airy gesture with his plump right hand. “Dreamers—mathematical loonies.” When Craine went on waiting, his