    Ŀ 
      from the introduction to TINWHISTLE BASIC                 Screen 6    
    
     you will agree that a computer is not a mechanical genius but  an  idiot 
     savant, dazzling  in  its ability to retain, collate and recall, utterly 
     dismal in its ability to venture beyond its own experience  or  to  pose 
     questions that are not responses in disguise.  And that artificial intel- 
     ligence is artificial in the sense that a rose with petals and leaves of 
     silk  is  artificial, the  illusion excellent when our attention is upon 
     its petals and its leaves, a travesty when we turn to its scent, its tex- 
     ture and yes, its thorns. 
          Artificial  or  not, computer  intelligence  has  evolved to such a 
     point  that  every aspect of our infrastructure is in some way dependent 
     upon  it.  The  danger  is  that  the stewardship of that dependency has 
     become almost as complex as  the  infrastructure  itself  and  that  the 
     so-called  "cutting-edge" of the technology has become more and more the 
     possession  of  the privileged few.  I have no problem with this as such;
     I do, however, have  a problem with what happens when the privileged few 
     become so privileged and so overweening that like  the Mediaeval scholas- 
     tics, they  see  process  more  important than substance and fundamental 
     assumptions too sacred to disturb.
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