But the headache was only a symptom, and could be fixed.
tracking with closeups (17)
BRIGHTER THAN A THOUSAND MEN
“Shalmaneser, pizzle-teaser,
Had a wife and couldn’t please her.
Go and tell the big computer
(Mary’s) lover doesn’t suit her.”
—Children’s singing game reported from Syracuse, N.Y., November 2009
“A randy young wench named Teresa
Tried her charms out upon Shalmaneser
For the first time quite frigid
She, not he, grew rigid,
And the scientists couldn’t unfreeze her.”
—Graffito from University Hall of Residence Auckland, New Zealand; variants common throughout English-speaking world
“They surely are condemned to Hell
Who rule their lives by greed and lust
And Satan waits for those as well
Who in machines repose their trust.”
—Hymn composed for Tenth International Rally of the Family of Divine Daughters
i wish codders i had cool detachment
like
chilledchildchilled
how are you feelium
in the liquid helium
HERE WE GO ROUND THE HUNGARY FLUSH
Meg
a brain computer
SHALL MAN EASE HER OR WOULD YOU ADVISE
AGAINST IT
don’t
—From GRAUNCH::prosoversepix
“It is dismaying—one may even say disheartening—to see the degree to which blind faith in the manufactured objects that we dignify by the name of ‘computer’ has replaced trust in prayer and the guidance of God. You will never find anyone to admit that he or she has substituted a machine for the living divine presence, yet that is exactly what has happened to the bulk of our population. They speak of the evaluations which computers print out for them in the hushed, reverent tones which our ancestors reserved for Holy Writ, and now that General Technics has made its arrogant claim about this new piece of hardware, nicknamed ‘Shalmaneser’, we can foresee the day when everyone will have surrendered his responsibility as a thinking being to a machine which he has been deluded into respecting as more intelligent than himself. That is, unless we with God’s help manage to reverse the trend.”
—From an earlier sermon by the luckless bishop whom Henry Butcher sabotaged
“Okay, Shalmaneser—you tell me what I ought to do!”
—Colloquial usage throughout N. America
(SHALMANESER That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he’s apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he’s as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn’t really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.
—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
Never in human history did any manufactured object enter so rapidly into the common awareness of mankind as Shalmaneser did when they took the security wraps off. Adaptation of him as a “public image” for prose and verse followed literally within days; a few months saw him apotheosised as a byword, a key figure in dirty jokes, a court of final appeal, and a sort of mechanical Messias. Some of these cross-referred; in particular, there was the story about the same Teresa who cropped up in the New Zealand limerick, which told how they sent for a Jewish telepath to ask what happened, when they discovered that thanks to the liquid helium she was in a state of suspended animation, and he explained with a puzzled look that he could only detect one thought in her head—“Messias has not yet come.”
Also, until GT published a rota and scale of hire-charges, consultant computing firms in twenty countries trembled on the verge of bankruptcy as their clients decided to switch their custom to Shalmaneser.
Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere had been shown visiting Shalmaneser one hundred and thirty-seven times, more than was accorded to any other activity except freefly-suiting.
Orbiting on Triptine, Bennie Noakes was prouder of the fact that his imagination had produced Shalmaneser than he was of any other event he had dreamed up.
Factually: he was a Micryogenic® device of the family collectively referred to as the Thecapex group (THEoretical CAPacity EXceeds—human brain, understood) and of that family’s fourth generation, his predecessors having been the pilot model Jeroboam, the commercially available Rehoboam of which over a thousand were in operation, and the breadboard layout Nebuchadnezzar which turned out to have so many bugs in it they discontinued the project and cannibalised the parts.
The number of technical problems which had had to be solved before he could be put into operation beggared description; the final programme for the schematics required fourteen hours’ continuous operation of six Rehoboams linked in series, a capacity which the publicity department calculated would be adequate to provide a thousand-year solution for the orbits of the Solar System correct to twenty decimal places. And at that, using so much capacity for so long on a single task brought the chance of a sixfold simultaneous error to the thirty per cent level, so there was one chance in three that when they built the final version and switched it on something would have gone irremediably wrong.
Indeed, some of the original design team had recently been heard to express the heretical view that something had gone wrong with the schematics. By this time, they claimed, it should have been established beyond doubt that Shalmaneser was conscious in the human sense, possessed of an ego, a personality and a will.
Others, more sanguine, declared that proof of such awareness already existed, and evidenced certain quite unforeseen reactions the machine had displayed in solving complex tasks.
The psychologists, called in to settle the argument, left again with headshakes, divided into two equally opposed camps. Some said the problem was insoluble, and referred back to the ancient puzzle: given a room divided in two by an opaque curtain, and a voice coming from the other side, how do you discover whether the voice belongs to a cleverly programmed computer or a human being? Their rivals maintained that in their eagerness to see mechanical consciousness the designers had set up a self-fulfilling prophecy—had, in effect, programmed the schematics so as to give the impression of consciousness when information was processed in the system.
The public at large was quite unconcerned about the debate between the experts. For them, Shalmaneser was a legend, a myth, a folk hero, and a celebrity; with all that, he didn’t need to be conscious as well.
A few days after they rigged up the direct-verbal inputs—Shalmaneser was the first computer ever with sufficient spare capacity to handle normal spoken English regardless of the speaker’s tone of voice—one of the technicians asked him on the spur of the moment, “Shal, what’s your view? Are you or aren’t you a conscious entity?”
The problem took so long to analyse—a record three-quarters of a minute—that the inquirer was growing alarmed when the response emerged.
“It appears impossible for you to determine whether the answer I give to that question is true or false. If I reply affirmatively there does not seem to be any method whereby you can ascertain the accuracy of the statement by referring it to external events.”
Relieved to have had even such a disappointing answer after the worrying delay, the questioner said fliply, “So who do we ask if you can’t tell us—God?”
“If you can contact Him,” Shalmaneser said, “of course.”
“The case of Teresa’s instructive—
It shows how extremely seductive
A shiggy can be
If her an-atom-ee
Is first rendered super-conductive.”
—Quoted in the General Technics house organ, January 2010