The God Machine Read online

  Smythe leaned back in his chair and permitted the trace of a smile to appear. "If this potential realizes fruition, Mr. Rand, there is every possibility that Steve may be rated as a mathematical genius."

  My mother sighed and mumbled about a genius who never knew what time he was supposed to be home at night. I laughed with Tom at being brought so abruptly back to earth.

  Our government visitor paused to relight his pipe; I waited impatiently to hear what else Smythe had come to tell us. I knew that while Smythe addressed himself directly to my father, hewing to the respect due the parent, his words were selected carefully for their effect upon me. "Steve's natural talent is different, even unusual, Mr. Rand," he went on, "yet it is not so rare as to be exclusive. Experience has taught me—we have, as you may have suspected by now, gone into this with the greatest of care—well, experience has taught us that a natural talent by itself isn't enough. I said that it needs guidance, that it must be developed. I can't emphasize that too much," he said, nodding his leonine head as if to lend added emphasis to his own words.

  "We learned this the hard way, to put it bluntly," he went on. "We have been brought by, ah, by events stirring within the Soviet Union, to reexamine the methods with which we, as a nation, have utilized—or ignored—our single most valuable resource. I mean, of course, the young men and women just striking out in the world."

  He paused, and again that trace of a smile appeared, an unspoken admission that Tom Smythe, and many others like him, were engaged in a monumental effort to realize as a future promise what had in the past suffered neglect. But what I understood immediately eluded the satisfaction of my father.

  "That sounds almost like a speech you have said many times, before, Mr. Smythe." Immediately my father held up his hand to blunt the expected reaction. "No offense, no offense, Mr. Smythe," he said quickly. "I can understand your problem. I imagine you have said many times before what you're telling us now?"

  The smile broadened into a wide grin of admission. "Touché," he said with a gesture of his pipe.

  My father scratched the side of his nose in the move my mother and I knew so well. A clear sign that he hadn't yet been sold a bill of goods—no matter how slick the salesman. Again he sought, and found, the direct gaze of our visitor.

  "Well, then, Mr. Smythe," my father said, "there is, I'm sure, much in what you say. But there is also something frightening in your words."

  Smythe waited, silent. I had the feeling that many times before he had encountered this same situation.

  "Urn, all this has a ring of, well"—my father shifted in his seat, placing his drink on the table alongside him—"as if these youngsters were being branded as commodities. I buy and sell, Mr. Smythe,"

  he emphasized, "and I would hate to think of Steve and others like him as—as, well, as commodities to be traded across a bargaining counter." He shook his head unhappily. "I get the feeling—and mind you, I hope that I'm wrong —that these kids really don't have that much say about what happens to them." He sat back, waiting. He had given Smythe his chance to complete what he had come here to accomplish.

  I held my breath. Again that trace of a smile flickered across Smythe's face.

  "Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Rand," he said after a long pause. "It is not true because that sort of thing doesn't pay off."

  My father arched his eyebrows and pursed his lips. With an effort he kept his silence, waiting.

  "We learned, Mr. Rand—and we learned this a long time ago, I should add—that it is impossible to regiment the creative mind. We are aware, acutely aware, that this mind in which we are so interested, the creative mind, will not function at its best when confined within a mental or intellectual straitjacket."

  Again the slow shaking of that leonine head; again the feeling that Smythe was not so much talking to us as if he were reaffirming, aloud, what he believed absolutely within himself.

  "One of the problems of our society," he continued, "is that there's too much regimentation. That's the curse"—he smiled fleetingly—"of what we would call the technocratic society. It can be stifling. In any intellectual endeavor there must, there absolutely must, be the spark from within young and inquiring minds. It's not only dangerous but, on the national level, it may even prove fatal to extinguish that spark."

  He leaned back in his seat, again searching his pockets for matches. I had the strangest feeling that this poking about was more deliberate than necessary, as if Smythe were providing his audience with a recess in which to digest his message.

  "I have a fair amount of experience at this sort of thing, Mr. Rand," he said suddenly. Then, almost as if with an air of resignation: "More than once I have been described as a pied piper. But I do not lead, Mr. Rand. I point the way."

  My father smiled; Smythe had gotten through. Our visitor didn't miss the breach in the parental wall.

  "The youngsters with whom we work," he added swiftly, "are free, intellectually and emotionally, not to pursue our advice, if that becomes their decision. To repeat, we point the way—but we do not sing any siren song. We advise, we assist, we counsel as much as it is possible to do so. We do all this because we know truly how critical all this really is. But we can't push." A slow grin appeared. "Any parent knows that," he said softly.

  My father nodded. "Let's get down to cases, Mr. Smythe," he said. "What about our son?"

  This time Smythe directed his smile to me, and I grinned back. I couldn't help it. He was something like a pied piper, and I knew I was ready to follow wherever he might lead. Smythe had that aura about him; it was an invisible, yet almost tangible force.

  "Steve's promise, to repeat," Smythe said, "lies in the mathematical sciences. But full and early development on a haphazard basis no longer is possible in a world of technological complexity and an accelerated pace of events." Again Smythe had made that imperceptible shift to assume complete command of the situation. "Development must take place at the earliest age possible, but that age must also be consistent with the capabilities of the youth himself. That's why we prefer not to interfere, except in rare cases, with a youngster's home life during high school. Emotional development constitutes one of the ingredients critical to the fabric that makes up each one of us. Steve's moral and emotional background in this household is all we could ask—"

  "You mean you've checked us out, too?" The words sliced into Smythe's explanation.

  "Of course, Mr. Rand. Wouldn't you have done the same thing?"

  My father nodded slowly, begrudging the point.

  "But now Steve is ready to be committed to his future," Smythe went on. "At the moment he is enjoying all this attention. Later"—Smythe's eyes locked with mine—"despite the brilliance of which he is already aware, when he stumbles against some truly staggering problems, he may wish he had never heard of me. . . ."

  He was right.

  3

  SECRET

  From: Harkness, M. E.; Interoffice Code 2123Q To: Computer Sciences Panel; Presidential Science Advisory Board

  Reference: Special Report 4, Project Pied Piper Response: Pied Piper SP 4; C2123Q

  To review:

  The digital computer epitomizes the new information technology in the range and diversity of information processing it makes possible. Its impact upon the diverse sciences with which we are occupied occurs in many guises; as traditional data analysis; as data processing of huge volumes of records; as networks for gathering primary data; as techniques for building responsive experimental arrangements; and as a basic theoretical tool in the simulation of complex systems.

  Despite significant gains within the last decade, much of the impact is still only potential. Sufficient evidence is at hand to support the judgment that this new information technology will exert an "impact effect" on many new developing sciences as significant as did the technologies derived from thermodynamics in an earlier period.

  Project Pied Piper is planning for its impact to be exerted, not at the present, but in the p
redictable near future when computer technology will have attained that level where the exploitation of this new technology will bring its greatest return. The growth of information-technology systems and the paced progress of Pied Piper have been intended from their outset to coincide at this planned future date.

  An understanding of the role of information technology requires some description of the digital computer, which is, in essence, a machine for following instructions. In the past, a machine merely responded to the setting of a switch or the position of a lever, but a computer responds to a language.

  This is the revolutionary development.

  In principle, an astonishingly small set of primitive instructions suffices for information processing, but a typical computer can have scores of different instructions. Only a machine for processing information can obey a language, and, conversely, only such a machine can form new instructions for itself and thus change its mode of operation in intricate ways.

  The capability of a computer is measured by the amount of information it can store, the number of basic operations it can perform per second, and the reliability with which it operates. The first large commercial computer, which appeared in 1951, did about 4,000 additions per second and had 1,000

  10-digit numbers stored and accessible at high speed. Today's biggest machine performs well over 1,000,000 additions per second and has considerably more than 100,000 10-digit numbers accessible at high speed. From 1951 to the present, speed has been increased by a factor already close to 300, and memory by a factor well in excess of 100. Reliability has increased correspondingly, so that today's machines run with many billions of operations between errors. Even without the further advances that already are predictable in their embryonic stages, machines are currently powerful enough to bring about several revolutions in the application of information technology to many old and new sciences.

  Now we come more specifically to the urgency of Project Pied Piper. For a computer to do sophisticated things it must have a sophisticated instructor. Fortunately, there has been a growth of know-how in instructing the machine, or, programming. In areas of significance to new sciences—an excellent example is the spectacular range of the life sciences—an extraordinary range of numerical computations can be made with great facility: standard statistical analyses, matrix inversions, spectra and cross-spectra, auto- and cross-correlation of time series, the numerical solution of ordinary and differential equations, and so on. Other operations have been carried out in a few experimental programs, and will soon become routine: the recognition of fixed type fonts for direct input of printed material, the simulation of neural networks, and the extraction of meaningful data from background "noise." Speech recognition, inductive inference, and language translation are in exploratory stages.

  How does this affect Project Pied Piper? The answer lies in the stumbling block of computer programming-control and the solution that appears to hold such great promise in Pied Piper.

  Essentially, the hidden price for the general-purpose computer is the headache of writing sequences of tens of thousands of elementary instructions. The tedium involved in instructing computers has prompted the development of automatic programming procedures and languages whereby the machine assumes some of the burden of instructing itself.

  The pressure to develop new instructions must come from potential users who have a clearly expressed need. Once again the life sciences provide a compelling example: Almost certainly, the most convenient programming for the life sciences must reflect some of the individualities of the language of biology—individualities can be unearthed only by the life scientist in the course of actual programming and experimenting.

  The basic problem, of course, is much wider than this restriction to one branch of science.

  The need for effective and fairly rapid two-way communications with the machine is the major stumbling block to which this Report has made reference. In all but a few instances today, twenty-four hours or more intervene between the gathering of experimental data and the retrieval of the results of their analysis. Such delays make impossible the adequate incorporation of the computer into experimentation.

  Either we must learn how to let many users have almost immediate access to a single large computer or we must supply each experimenter with a device of his own.

  Difficulties in communication and access are by no means incurable and are attracting much attention; scientists of the USSR are pursuing urgently what could accurately be described as a "crash effort" to hasten such development within that nation. Academician Sergei Sobolev, director of the Novosibirsk Institute of Mathematics and a leading cyberneticist, has proclaimed: "The time is not far off when a network of computing centers will cover our entire country from the Pacific to the Carpathian foothills." Intelligence analysts attach special significance to such statements as that made at the twenty-third Congress of the Communist Party (March, 1966) by First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev when he castigated Soviet cyberneticists for their failure to bridge the gap between theoretical research and applied technology.

  The fundamental point to be made is that the "new information technology" is not merely a euphemism for the large high-speed digital computer. It implies the ability to construct processing devices in response to specific demands, and in combination with whatever other techniques are considered appropriate. . . .

  The members of this Panel will find pertinent data of the highest interest concerning development with the bio-cybernetics concept of computer communications, and especially as it relates to the planned development/education of the human elements of such bio-cybernetics systems. It is urged that great consideration be given to the reports of Thomas A. Smythe and to his progress evaluations of the human subjects involved. As has been discussed previously with Panel members, the need for appropriately developed and conditioned "biological partners" for the advanced cybernetics systems can be produced only through a long-range, patient effort such as has been instituted re Pied Piper. The Panel members will note the cautious optimism in the studies evaluation of Steven Rand, HS-A193. . . .

  4

  mike nagumo leaned closer, whispering from the side of his mouth, "Crusty old bastard, ain't he?"

  I hid my grin behind my hand, nodding, watching carefully to see that we weren't receiving any undue attention from the "crusty old bastard" who was holding forth from his scholastic pulpit. Beyond multiple rows of student heads, Mathematics Professor Wilhelm von Weisskopf, resplendent in tweed suit and bristling white beard, and in his customary vile temper, heaped cutting abuse upon those who had been selected to receive guidance and wisdom from his brilliant mind. "Kaiser Willie," as his students dubbed him, appeared convinced that those same students required, along with intellectual nourishment, liberal doses of his famed sarcastic wit. Mathematics he wielded with the certain touch of practiced genius; personal drubbings he issued with a careless abandon. Never was there the student who received from Von Weisskopf a solitary word, not so much as a crumb, of praise.

  "Mathematics," he would growl from beneath unruly brows, "is a language of the truth. Anything less than perfection is therefore somewhat less than the truth. I do not compliment those who wallow in less than the entire truth, for anything less is to embrace ignorance, and this is deserving only of contempt."

  When brought to the tight-lipped anger with which he frequently assailed his class, he was as wont to castigate a student for a "deficient genetic ancestry" as for a demonstrated ignorance in the classroom.

  And—

  "Oh, oh," Mike Nagumo muttered, straightening quickly in his seat. "I think I've bought the farm."

  I looked to the front of the room. Sure enough. Kaiser Willie's gravelly tones no longer filled the air. He stood with fists planted solidly on his hips, beard bristling, glaring at Mike. Mike rose slowly to his feet, with a great effort keeping his face impassive. As only Mike Nagumo could do. There's something inescapably imposing about a Japanese who stands six feet three inches tal
l and who weighs 230 pounds.

  "Mister Nagumo!"

  I thought the room would crack up. His body stiff, Mike bowed formally from the waist, hands stiffly at his sides. With a single word he acknowledged Kaiser Willie:

  "Yessss?"

  It sounded like a boa constrictor. The sibilant, deep hiss sliced through the room. The word came forth in the finest tradition of an old movie with a Japanese villain. And from someone who spoke better English than myself. I shut my eyes, and groaned; I knew Mike would be off and running.

  "Mister Nagumo! Perhaps you would share with the others in this room your private conversation with Mr. Rand?"

  Mike looked blankly at the professor. Slowly his great head shook from side to side. "Cannot do so," he said with exaggerated politeness. "Matter is crassified."

  "Crassified?" I thought Kaiser Willie was going to drop his uppers. I ran desperately into the breach.

  "Sir," I called out, rising to my feet, "he means classified."

  The cold blue eyes glared at me. "Your spontaneity is uncalled for, Mr. Rand."

  I winced and draped myself back in my chair. Mike Nagumo was strictly on his own.

  "Mr. Nagumo, did I hear you say that the matter you felt was so important—sufficiently so as to interrupt this class—was classified?"

  "No, sirr. Is crassified."

  We couldn't believe it. A blank look appeared fleetingly across the visage of Kaiser Willie.

  "Explain yourself, sir!" The gravelly tones were becoming thunderous.

  Mike Nagumo bowed again, slowly, ponderously. "Today, sirr, is to be seventh of December.

  Anniversary, sirr, of honorabre father. Die at Perr Harbor. I remembering occasion with Mr. Rand."

  Again the deep, careful bow. "I aporogize, if disturb crass."

  I thought my ribs would crack. Professor von Weisskopf's face went blank. Then he rallied. "I don't recall you ever saying anything about your father being in the Navy at Pearl Harbor, Mr. Nagumo.