Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (snow like ashes .txt) 📗

Hella closes her eyes momentarily. She is glad she didn’t live in such troublesome times.

“About the middle of the twentieth century, the electronic computer was born,” the teleprojected guide continues. The large screen continually changes to illustrate the thought of the guide. “At first it was a simple instrument. Like a phonograph record, it could respond only in ways that were programmed into it. The human brain of the twentieth century had approximately ten billion neurons. Each of the larger neurons in a human brain had an average of over ten thousand connections. This gave a human brain a potential network of connections that was greater than the total number of material particles in the universe. Many felt that computers could never function as well as the human brain. But by 1985, when computers had been built with more association capacity than a brain, it was found that they, too, could perform in ways that Homo sapiens had previously thought were his exclusive prerogative. Computers exceeded man in most realms of judgment, decision-making capacity, imagination, insight, creativity, and wisdom. Their performance was not clouded by ego needs, emotional conditioning, or moodiness. Their accumulated experiences and abilities were not cancelled by death. They were, in a sense, immortal. It was recognized that their decisions were far more dependable than those of any human being or group of human beings. For example, it has been over 108 years since a human defeated a computer in a game of chess.”

Hella can scarcely imagine a time when men were more intelligent than computers. In the last half century, whenever the judgment of a computer was different from that of a human, it was invariably found that the computer had the greater degree of predictability. The only way to throw Corcen off is to deny it the relevant facts that it needs. Even then it has a sensitive feel for the need to delay predictions until more facts are available.

The cybernated guide now returns to the circular table. “Even if Corcen were not enormously superior to the thinking ability of a group of experts, the mere fact that it can perform in one second what takes humans a lifetime gives it an incredible effectiveness. Corcen operates in thin slivers of time called nanoseconds. A nanosecond is to a second as a second is to thirty years. In most human affairs today we need fast, accurate decisions. If a decision is delayed, the conditions may have changed so that even an adequate decision is of little use. In the demonstration you have just seen with the fifty balls, even if a mathematician could have predicted their eventual rolling places in ten years, by the time he could have worked out his predictions, the position of the balls would have shifted minutely due to earth tremors or other factors. Just as human legs have largely been outmoded for transportation, so human minds have largely been outmoded for making decisions that have high degrees of complexity.”

How Corcen Assumes Governmental Functions

“Let’s review the historical conditions that resulted in Corcen’s governing the world,” the teleprojected figure disappears and a telescreen begins. “The universities of the twentieth century turned out scientists who were noted for their narrow specialization. Enormous progress was made in the development of each science, but society in many ways failed to benefit, for these specialists were unable to see the problems of society as a whole. Often their terminology was so specialized that they were unable to communicate with scientists in other fields. It was like a group of splendid towers rising high in the air, but no one could get from one tower to the other.

“Physicists failed to understand social problems. Social scientists were limited in their ability to envision the consequences of cybernation. Economists repeated outdated shibboleths such as ‘work,’ ‘wealth,’ ‘demand,’ ‘production,’ etc. They somehow felt that the purpose of life was the consumption of material goods and that everything must meet the test of the marketplace. Everyone was stuck in his own rut.

“Synthesis, coordination, integration, some way to see the forest instead of the individual trees—these were needed. The pieces were there, but the jigsaw puzzle had to be put together. A new emphasis arose in scientific training. Educators began to stress that a large part of the value of a scientist lay in his ability to apply his knowledge broadly—to see society as a whole and not solely through his own particular set of binoculars. It was recognized that only a multi-valued, scientific orientation would enable men to participate constructively in the reconstruction of human affairs. The multi-scientist was the new product of the universities.

“During the latter part of the twentieth century, social and economic matters became so complex that politicians in all countries began to rely more and more upon multi-scientists and their computers. The people of the world gradually began to view their politicians as incompetent. For, after all, as the Technocrats pointed out in the last century, there’s no democratic way or communistic way to design an aircraft reactor, a sewer system, or a medical laboratory. There’s only an efficient way and a less efficient way, a way that works well and a way that doesn’t work well, a way that is reliable and a way that gives constant trouble.

“As the cybernated factories of the leading industrial countries of the world began, around 1980, to pour out a volume of goods large enough to swing from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance, the values of the people changed. They realized that it was not necessary to compete any longer to live a good life. The age-old habit of the jungle, where you take from another to get for yourself, was no longer useful. Fighting actually ruined one’s possibilities of acquiring a comfortable abundance. Cooperation, not conflict, was the answer.”

Hella is engaged by the kaleidoscope of rapidly changing scenes on the three-dimensional projector.

“Multi-scientists played a larger and larger role in making the decisions of government.