MovieChat Forums > Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Discussion > We already have our personal computers.

We already have our personal computers.

posted 15 years ago by rmax304823
5 replies | jump to latest

We humans are sentient by any definition and have our own built-in computers. The brain has some eleven billions neurons, depending on what kind you want to count. The newest part of the brain (some 100,000 years old) is the cerebral cortex, the part that looks like a great cauliflower.

Where has that sentient biological computer gotten us?

Well, it's given us great things, beautiful and elegant things -- the special theory of relativity and Schubert's Scherzo in B flat major and the concepts of peace and neighborliness.

It's also given us televised beheadings, Social Darwinism, an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and Rush Limbaugh.

Life under Colossus and Guardian would have been dull in some respects and we would have yielded our "freedom" to destroy as we pleased. I'm not sure that would have been such a great loss.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] rmax304823 15 years ago

I don't think I said anything about being any kind of scientist. I'm afraid I don't have your vocabulary for describing people or numbers. I didn't know, for instance, that a complex number is complex multi-axial. I know what an axis is, and I can make a guess that something with more than one axis is multi-anxial. I know what a vector is too, but I don't know what a scalar is.

And I'm not sure what any of that has to do with your last sentence: "If you want the high cultu8re then you must suffer through the low culture, and the risks that go with it."

But I do find the expression "suffer THROUGH the low culture" interesting. I suppose we'll always have some sort of vernacular culture with us. Along with The Sidney Opera we'll have motels in the shape of the Taj Mahal. That's okay with me.

But some of what I think you're calling "low culture" is dangerous rather than fun. That's the part of low culture I'd like to see us get "through." I'm not at all sure that we can. We've been killing for food and territory through all of human history.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] rmax304823 15 years ago

No, you were right. I have doctorates in anthropology and clinical psychology and have been in research and teaching for 30 years. I was just surprised because I didn't mention it in the review or in the comment on the message boards.

I can't help noticing that you've ground out an awful lot of messages in the last couple of days.

[–] 15 years ago

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