IF
YOU decide to write on a subject as momentous as what
kind of intelligence may succeed humanity, publish in
Paris. There, the clever and the playful are expected,
not suspected. And you can skip writing the introductory
ten-chapter beginner's guide to everything that English-speaking
publishers insist on. Your audience will have read their
Descartes, Nietzsche and Turing, and know where they
disagree with them.
Jean-Michel
Truong's title, which translates as "utterly inhuman",
refers to what he calls the Successor--an intelligence
housed in silicon, not the squishy stuff of the human
body. The early stages of its development can be seen
in the interlinked computers of the Internet.
But
the idea itself sparked into life in the winter of 1920,
when a 21-year-old natural scientist named Friedrich
Hayek wrote a paper, "How can order create itself within
our neural fibres?" This foundation of the "connectionist"
theory of mind paved the way for the Successor. Hayek
later went on to become a fervent apostle of a barely
regulated globalised economy. It is the communication
needs of that economy that persuades humans to devote
so much effort to constructing the Successor.
It's
not always clear whether Truong is speaking metaphorically
or literally about the Successor. It doesn't much matter:
this is an entertaining, stimulating and refreshingly
brief read.
Mike
Holderness is a consultant on the Internet
et tous comme ça
©
New Scientist 2001
