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This is an extract from the book I am writing called 'Living in the Cloud'. It is presented as a draft - comments and criticism are welcome.
A Mind of its Own
Can machines do what we as thinking entities can do? Looking at today's computerised world, it would be hard to conclude otherwise. Yet do machines think? The answer really depends on what is meant by thinking.
It is my view that a computer does think, although not like a human nor even like an individual. I would contend that a computer thinks more like a city. It is full of individual and often incompatible ideas, self-focussed thoughts running in all manner of ways and yet somehow managing to flow together in one direction when required. It is vaguely conscious, though not of itself, but rather as a product of the life which courses through it. When there is no life, there is no thought. Like an ant colony or a beehive, a computer is gestalt. Its parts have no interest in or awareness of themselves beyond their capacity and desire to serve the whole.
It is perhaps no coincidence then that the computer was not designed by an individual. Neither has its history nor its fate at any time rested in the hands of an individual, though there have been many who have influenced computer technology and many more who have been influenced by it.
Computer technology is usually considered from the perspective of those who use it or those who create it, but rarely as an entity in its own right. Yet despite the concerted efforts of corporations and governments, the development of technology is not something that is easy to control, suggesting there may perhaps be a touch of the gestalt here too. A look at the evolution of digital technology so far, including initiatives that have succeeded and failed, certainly reveals some interesting insights into computer technology’s development and evolution.
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