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# Computers in Science Fiction - 11

Marcia Ascher

Professor of Mathematics

Ithaca College

Ithaca, N.Y. 14850

"In science fiction writing, non-specialists attempt to involve other non-specialists in the human questions arising from computer use."

In "The Computer and the Poet," Norman Cousins emphasizes that the role of poets, "those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit," becomes even more important as computer usage increases (32). Science fiction writers should indeed be included as poets in our technological age. All too often in our society, problems arising from technology are left to technologists because others are too unsure of their own knowledge to question or criticize. The science fiction writings directly involving computers are one of the few places where non-specialists attempt to involve other non-specialists in the human questions arising from computer use.

## Emphasis on Man

Perhaps the most recurrent science fiction theme is the difference between computers and man. These raise the question of the proper role for machines versus the proper role for humans or emphasize the aspects that make man unique. In one story (Asimov, "Someday") children in a society where reading and writing are no longer needed form a secret society to learn just for the joy of it; in another (Weir, "What Happened to the Teaching Machine") where all learning is by machine, only uneducated children still know how to pose questions. A super-computer is defeated by a human because he can bluff or "lose to win" and it cannot (Caiden, The God Machine); another super-computer is robbed of its control because of a group of humans whose main desire is freedom (Pohl, Starchild); and to others (Dick, "The Variable Man"; Sheckley, "Fool's Mate") human unpredictability continues to be a problem. This distinctive aspect of man is very directly stated by the computer builder in a French science fiction story (Boulie, "The Perfect Robot"). In trying to make the computer more like man, he progressively adds to its ability to deal with data, the ability to play chess, language, concepts of love, the ability to engender new machines, concepts of good and evil, and finally what he considers to be the crucial missing element — "I have unhinged them". Mike, a super-computer capable of running an entire revolution (Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), cannot understand why a joke is funny, and the computer

AM (Ellison, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream") hates people because unlike them "he could not wander, he could not wonder, he could not belong, he could merely be".

Science fiction writers persist in confronting their readers with a question that receives little direct discussion but is of current concern. As expressed by the historian Bruce Mazelish (33), just as continuities were established with the material universe, the animal kingdom, and our, subconscious, we are faced with transcending the 4th discontinuity of harmonizing our existence and those of machines in a technological society. Or, as expressed by Weizenbaum ("On the Impact of the Computer on Society") the insights of science such as those provided earlier by the work of Galileo, Darwin, and Freud, and now provoked by the advent of the computer, shake man's self-esteem because, when viewed superficially, they seem to diminish man.

## Mechanistic View of Man

We diminish man and in our anxiety grow more disdainful of ourselves and ambivalent towards computers if computer usage is predicated on a mechanistic view of man and this mechanistic view becomes our self-image. Too many statements made by systems analysts or computer scientists display that a computer-usable view of man is being substituted for the whole man. Keep in mind the above list of human attributes contrasted to computers by science-fiction writers as you read the following statement from the widely read and much discussed book Limits of Growth written by well-motivated systems analysts:

Some considered the model too 'technocratic' observing that it did not include critical social factors, such as the effects of adoption of different value systems. The chairman of the Moscow meeting summed up this point when he said, 'Man is no mere biocybernetic device'. This criticism is readily admitted. The present model considers man only in his material system because valid social elements simply