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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Electronic Analogue of Living Brain | ||
| Imposing the abilities of a human brain into a computer |
| They walked as though they were in the presence of the dead. In a way, they were, for what were the automatons that once had run the factory, if not corpses? The machines were controlled by computers that were really not computers at all, but the electronic analogues of living brains. And if they were turned off, were they not dead? For each had once been a human mind.
Take a master petroleum chemist, infinitely skilled in the separation of crude oil into its fractions. Strap him down, probe into his brain with searching electronic needles. The machine scans the patterns of the mind, translates what it sees into charts and sine waves. Impress these same waves on a robot computer and you have your chemist. Or a thousand copies of your chemist, if you wish, with all of his knowledge and skill, and no human limitations at all. Put a dozen copies of him into a plant and they will run it all, twenty-four hours a day, seven days of every week, never tiring, never overlooking anything, never forgetting.... |
| Technovelgy from The Tunnel Under The World,
by Frederik Pohl. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1955 Additional resources -
|
See also the construct from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson, recorded personality, from Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. See also the personality simulator from The Dosadi Experiment (1977) by Frank Herbert, the personality-construct from Killing Gramps (1988) by Ann K. Schwader and the Neuro-netsukes from Rim (1994) by Alexander Besher.
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