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"We were essentially being shell-shocked by rapid change. That was one of the things you needed science-fiction writers for back in the Sixties, because we could cope with the future."
- Peter Watts
 |
| No Human Programmers | ||
| The idea that computers are too complicated and too important to be programmed by human beings. |
This is an early direct reference to this idea.
| There are nine people on the Council. I don’t know why, though the BC might tell me if I asked, since it nominates and elects Council members. I’ve always fancied it’s so in case we ever screw up so totally that the universe does come apart at the seams and all eras coexist, we can field a team in the Never-neverland World Series.
Technically it’s called the Programmers’ Council. That’s a polite fiction. They don’t do any programming. Computers long ago grew too complex and too accurate to allow a mere human to fuck around with their instructions. Yet there are qualities no one has ever succeeded in placing into the memory banks. Don’t ask me what they are. Imagination might be one of them, empathy another. Or I could just be giving the human race credit for more than it deserves. Maybe the BC supports and maintains the Council to keep itself in check, to prevent it from actually becoming God. There is that hazard. Possibly the BC needs an element of fool-hardiness and prejudice and meanness and ornery self-interest to give it perspective. Or maybe, like the rest of us, it just needs a giggle now and then. |
| Technovelgy from Millennium,
by John Varley. Published by Berkley Books in 1983 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the City Fathers from Cities in Flight (1950's) by James Blish and Vulcan 3 from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick.
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
