We have never had, and are some considerable distance from fabricating, a computer that thinks and acts like Pol Pot. We have had a Pol Pot.
Voltaire viewed history as a long sequence of mindless atrocities, and it may be that a brain-like computer would in fact be more benign than we as a species have proved to be. However that may be, Luddite viewing with alarm was entirely predictable as a principal response to this announcement. von Neumann did not live to finish them; but his incomplete Silliman Lectures---published by the Yale University Press as 'The computer and the brain'---are prescient in this context. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
