[Robert A. Taylor:] “When I sat down at the LINC it had a little six-inch green and white display that looked like an oscilloscope […] You could turn up the speed, type an A on the keyboard, and the A would appear on the screen very quickly—the A was made of dots, like a dot-matrix printout […] You could see that this machine was building up a complicated reality through millions and millions of yes-no decisions.”

A good programming language ought to be better for explaining software than English. You should only need comments when there is some kind of kludge you need to warn readers about, just as on a road there are only arrows on parts with unexpectedly sharp curves.

One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other: “My little computer said such a funny thing this morning.”

In April, the callow lilies came back. They stretched their baby angel wings out and reached for the world. Gently, their tendrils caressed the sullen fence posts until even they lilted lovelier.

From her bedroom window, Lara watched the lilies […] She wanted to paint them, so she opened a new Flash template. A blank movie this time.

She set her cursor loose in the garden of her movie’s viewable area. Vector white lines below shorter vector yellow lines. She selected the white lines and grouped them together. She even moved them to a new layer entitled “Cry, Baby Angel, Cry.” Then she converted them into a graphic object and moved them to the library.

Hesitantly, Trevize placed a finger on the circle of light and at once the light spread out to cover the desk top. On it were the outline of two hands: a right and a left. With a sudden, smooth movement, the desk top tilted to an angle of forty-five degrees. Trevize took the seat before the desk. No words were necessary. It was clear what he was expected to do.

He placed his hands on the outlines on the desk, which were positioned for him to do so without strain. The desk top seemed soft, nearly velvety, where he touched it—and his hands sank in. He stared at his hands with astonishment, for they had not sunk in at all. They were on the surface, his eyes told him. Yet to his sense of touch it was as though the desk surface had given way, and as though something were holding his hands softly and warmly. Was that all? Now what?

He looked about and then closed his eyes in response to a suggestion. He had heard nothing. He had heard nothing! But inside his brain, as though it were a vagrant thought of his own, there was the sentence, “Please close your eyes. Relax. We will make connection.”

[…]

And as he and the computer held hands, their thinking merged and it no longer mattered whether his eyes were open or closed. Opening them did not improve his vision nor did closing them dim it.

Either way, he saw the room with complete clarity—not just in the direction in which he was looking, but all around and above and below. He saw every room in the spaceship and he saw outside as well. The sun had risen and its brightness was dimmed in the morning mist, but he could look at it directly without being dazzled, for the computer automatically filtered the light waves. He felt the gentle wind and its temperature, and the sounds of the world about him. He detected the planet's magnetic field and the tiny electrical charges on the wall of the ship.

He became aware of the controls of the ship, without even knowing what they were in detail. He knew only that if he wanted to lift the ship, or turn it, or accelerate it, or make use of any of its abilities, the process was the same as that of performing the analogous process to his body. He had but to use his will. Yet his will was not unalloyed. The computer itself could override. At the present moment, there was a formed sentence in his head and he knew exactly when and how the ship would take off. There was no flexibility where that was concerned. Thereafter, he knew just as surely, he would himself be able to override.

He found—as he cast the net of his computer-enhanced consciousness outward—that he could sense the condition of the upper atmosphere; that he could see the weather patterns; that he could detect the other ships that were swarming upward and the others that were settling downward. All of this had to be taken into account and the computer was taking it into account. If the computer had not been doing so, Trevize realized, he need only desire the computer to do so—and it would be done. So much for the volumes of programming; there were none. Trevize thought of Technical Sergeant Krasnet and smiled. He had read often enough of the immense revolution that gravities would make in the world, but the fusion of computer and mind was still a state secret. It would surely produce a still greater revolution.

He was aware of time passing. He knew exactly what time it was by Terminus Local and by Galactic Standard. How did he let go? And even as the thought entered his mind, his hands were released and the desk top moved back to its original position—and Trevize was left with his own unaided senses.

He felt blind and helpless as though, for a time, he had been held and protected by a superbeing and now was abandoned. Had he not known that he could make contact again at any time, the feeling might have reduced him to tears.

It is commonly understood, even by technically unsophisticated computer users, that if you have a piece of software that works on your Macintosh, and you move it over onto a Windows machine, it will not run. That this would, in fact, be a laughable and idiotic mistake, like nailing horseshoes to the tires of a Buick.

Frequently these sorts of files can be found in a directory with the name /src which is the hacker's Hebraic abbreviation of “source.”

Ëàçàðåâñêîå - áðîíèðîâàíèå ãîñòèíèö, îòåëåé, ñàíàòîðèåâ, ïàíñèîíàòîâ â Ëàçàðåâñêîì. Êîìïëåêñ «Ïðîìåòåé Êëóá», Ñàíàòîðèé «Îäèññåÿ», Ãîñòèíèöà «Èìïåðèÿ», Ñàíàòîðèé «Áèðþçà», Ãîñòèíèöà «Îêåàíèê», Ãîñòèíèöà «Øòîðì», Ãîñòèíèöà «Âîëíà», Îòåëü «Ïÿòíèöà-Äèàìàíä»

Говорят, что у нас на Урале
Деревянный компьютер собрали.
Без гвоздей, топором!
Винт, модем, сидиром!
Мышь живую в сарае поймали.

We need a [programming] language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler.

“Bend near to me!” he whispered in Govinda's ear. “Come, still nearer, quite close! Kiss me on the forehead, Govinda.”

Although surprised, Govinda was compelled by a great love and presentiment to obey him; he leaned close to him and touched his forehead with his lips. As he did this, something wonderful happened to him. While he was still dwelling on Siddhartha's strange words, while he strove in vain to dispel the conception of time, to imagine Nirvana and Samsara as one, while even a certain contempt for his friend's words conflicted with a tremendous love and esteem for him, this happened to him.

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces—hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, of a carp, with tremendous painfully opened mouth, a dying fish with dimmed eyes. He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in the postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw the heads of animals—boars, crocodiles, elephants, oxen, birds. He saw Krishna and Agni. He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other, and over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing, stretched across like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, shell, form or mask of water—and this mass was Siddhartha's smiling face which Govinda touched with his lips at that moment. And Govinda saw that this mask-like smile, this smile of unity over the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness over the thousands of births and deaths—this smile of Siddhartha—was exactly the same as the calm, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps gracious, prehaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he perceived it with awe a hundred times. It was in such a manner, Govinda knew, that the Perfect One smiled.

No longer knowing whether time existed, whether this display had lasted a second or a hundred years, whether there was a Siddhartha, or a Gotama, a Self and others, wounded deeply by a divine arrow which gave him pleasure, deeply enchanted and exalted, Govinda stood yet a while bending over Siddhartha's peaceful face which he had just kissed, which had just been the stage of all present and future forms. His countenance was unchanged after the mirror of the thousand-fold forms had disappeared from the surface. He smiled peacefully and gently, perhaps very graciously, perhaps very mockingly, exactly as the Illustrious One had smiled.

“Neige dich zu mir!” flüsterte er leise in Govindas Ohr. “Neige dich zu mir her! So, noch näher! Ganz nahe! Küsse mich auf die Stirn, Govinda!”

Während aber Govinda verwundert, und dennoch von großer Liebe und Ahnung gezogen, seinen Worten gehorchte, sich nahe zu ihm neigte und seine Stirn mit den Lippen berührte, geschah ihm etwas Wunderbares. Während seine Gedanken noch bei Siddharthas wunderlichen Worten verweilten, während er sich noch vergeblich und mit Widerstreben bemühte, sich die Zeit hinwegzudenken, sich Nirvana und Sansara als Eines vorzustellen, während sogar eine gewisse Verachtung für die Worte des Freundes in ihm mit einer ungeheuren Liebe und Ehrfurcht stritt, geschah ihm dieses:

Er sah seines Freundes Siddhartha Gesicht nicht mehr, er sah statt dessen andre Gesichter, viele, eine lange Reihe, einen strömenden Fluß von Gesichtern, von hunderten, von tausenden, welche alle kamen und vergingen, und doch alle zugleich dazusein schien-en, welche alle sich beständig veränderten und erneuerten, und welche doch alle Siddhartha waren. Er sah das Gesicht eines Fisches, eines Karpfens, mit unendlich schmerzvoll geöffnetem Maule, eines sterbenden Fisches, mit brechenden Augen—er sah das Gesicht eines neugeborenen Kindes, rot und voll Falten, zum Weinen verzogen—er sah das Gesicht eines Mörders, sah ihn ein Messer in den Leib eines.Menschen stechen—er sah, zur selben Sekunde, diesen Verbrecher gefesselt knien und sein Haupt vom Henker mit einem Schwertschlag abgeschlagen werden—er sah die Körper von Männern und Frauen nackt in Stellungen und Kämpfen rasender Liebe—er sah Leichen ausgestreckt, still, kalt, leer—er sah Tierköpfe, von Ebern, von Krokodilen, von Elefanten, von Stieren, von Vögeln—er sah Götter, sah Krischna, sah Agni—er sah alle diese Gestalten und Gesichter in tausend Beziehungen zueinander, jede der andern helfend, sie liebend, sie hassend, sie vernichtend, sie neu gebärend, jede war ein Sterbenwollen, ein leidenschaftlich schmerzliches Bekenntnis der Vergänglichkeit, und keine starb doch, jede verwandelte sich nur, wurde stets neu geboren, bekam stets ein neues Gesicht, ohne daß doch zwischen einem und dem anderen Gesicht Zeit gelegen wäre—und alle diese Gestalten und Gesichter ruhten, flossen, erzeugten sich, schwammen dahin und strömten ineinander, und über alle war beständig etwas Dünnes, Wesenloses, dennoch Seiendes, wie ein dünnes Glas oder Eis gezogen, wie eine durchsichtige Haut, eine Schale oder Form oder Maske von Wasser, und diese Maske lächelte, und diese Maske war Siddharthas lächelndes Gesicht, das er, Govinda, in eben diesem selben Augenblick mit den Lippen berührte. Und, so sah Govinda, dies Lächeln der Maske, dies Lächeln der Einheit über den strömenden Gestaltungen, dies Lächeln der Gleichzeitigkeit über den tausend Geburten und Toten, dies Lächeln Siddharthas war genau dasselbe, war genau das gleiche, stille, feine, undurchdringliche, vielleicht gütige, vielleicht spöttische, weise, tausendfältige Lächeln Gotamas, des Buddha, wie er selbst es hundertmal mit Ehrfurcht gesehen hatte. So, das wußte Govinda, lächelten die Vollendeten.

Nicht mehr wissend ob es Zeit gebe, ob diese Schauung eine Sekunde oder hundert Jahre gewährt habe, nicht mehr wissend, ob es einen Siddhartha, ob es einen Gotama, ob es Ich und Du gebe, im Innersten wie von einem göttlichen Pfeile verwundet, dessen Verwundung süß schmeckt, im Innersten verzaubert und aufgelöst, stand Govinda noch eine kleine Weile, über Siddharthas stilles Gesicht gebeugt, das er soeben geküßt hatte, das soeben Schauplatz aller Gestaltungen, alles Werdens, alles Seins gewesen war. Das Antlitz war unverändert, nachdem unter seiner Oberfläche die Tiefe der Tausendfältigkeit sich wieder geschlossen hatte, er lächelte still, lächelte leise und sanft, vielleicht sehr gütig, vielleicht sehr spöttisch, genau, wie er gelächelt hatte, der Erhabene.

It may be that after all this time, and after all that has happened, I do not remember that first time as it really was. Perhaps I remember it as it should have been; we do that sometimes, all of us. Whatever I've added, if I've added anything, was the right touch; the memory is perfect:

Midmorning, late spring in the Catskills and the mist burning away, but still there an underwater-green with the rich new greenness of the spring-struck trees radiating through it. A broken old stone fence, green-grey, and at the corner of the two roads, he sat naked. He alone in all that green was red, was reds: fine hair down to his earlobes copper-orange, slab-sided cheeks picking a ripe-peach-red out of the bars of sun, gold-red on the down of his chest and lower belly. He was sitting absolutely boneless, comfortably round-shouldered, and with his chin gone to bed on his collarbones.

And—maybe this is the part I've added, but it remembers like a real memory, and I'd like to think it happened that way—around his head flew a circle of white moths, turned pale, pale apple-green in that light and amazing against that hair. I stopped the car. I don't think it was because he was naked.

Because I couldn't help myself, I called to him, “Hey!”

He raised his head, swiftly but not startled, and opened his eyes; then, as part of a flowing sequence without stopping anywhere, he placed his hands on the stones and lifted himself and vaulted down, landing lightly and already walking. Walking, his body moved forward as if on tracks, not bobbing up and down the way most of the rest of us do. If his shoulders had been the least bit wider they would have been too wide; if his body were by a finger's breadth flatter it would have been too flat. He made no attempt to cover his nakedness and he wasn't displaying it, either; it just didn't matter to him. The moths whisked away in the wood as he stepped out in the road.

Then: his eyes. Think back now; in all the talk, in everything you have read or heard about Godbody, has anyone ever used a color-word for Godbody's eyes? Someone with hair that color is called a redhead, but redheads don't have red hair; it's orange or russet or brown-gold, and you just can't say that this man had red eyes and be right. Cinamon, maybe, but that's too brown. Sherry is too yellow, ruby is too red. His eyes were a rich color, that's all you can say, and warm.

Dark Glasses (The amorous subject wonders, not whether he should declare his love to the loved being, but to what degree he should conceal the turbulence of his passion: his desires, his distresses; in short, his excesses.)

…Yet, to hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other. I advance pointing to my mask: I set a mask upon my passion, but with a discreet (and wily) finger I designate this mask.

Link by link, click by click, search is building possibly the most lasting, ponderous, and significant cultural artifact in the history of humankind: the Database of Intentions.

The Great Flood

Computers are universal machines, their potential extends uniformly over a boundless expanse of tasks. Human potentials, on the other hand, are strong in areas long important for survival, but weak in things far removed. Imagine a “landscape of human competence,” having lowlands with labels like “arithmetic” and “rote memorization”, foothills like “theorem proving” and “chess playing,” and high mountain peaks labeled “locomotion,” “hand-eye coordination” and “social interaction.” We all live in the solid mountaintops, but it takes great effort to reach the rest of the terrain, and only a few of us work each patch.

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life! For now, though, we must rely on our representatives in the lowlands to tell us what water is really like.

I etch a pattern of geometric shapes onto a stone. To the uninitiated, the shapes look mysterious and complex, but I know that when arranged correctly they will give the stone a special power, enabling it to respond to incantations in a language no human being has ever spoken. I will ask the stone questions in this language, and it will answer by showing me a vision: a world created by my spell, a world imagined within the pattern on the stone.

A few hundred years ago in my native New England, an accurate description of my occupation would have gotten me burned at the stake. Yet my work involves no witchcraft: I design and program computers. The stone is a wafer of silicon, and the incantations are software.

Welcome to the fourth decade. The thinking mass of the solar system now exceeds one MIPS per gram; it's still pretty dumb, but it's not dumb all over. The human population is near maximum overshoot, pushing nine billion, but its growth rate is tipping toward negative numbers, and bits of what used to be the first world are now facing a middle-aged average. Human cogitation provides about 10^28 MIPS of the solar system's brainpower. The real thinking is mostly done by the halo of a thousand trillion processors that surround the meat machines with a haze of computation—individually a tenth as powerful as a human brain, collectively they're ten thousand times more powerful, and their numbers are doubling every twenty million seconds. They're up to 10^33 MIPS and rising, although there's a long way to go before the solar system is fully awake.

Lara's smile reflected across the glass of her monitor. She chose the text tool and in 42 point serif typed: “Dad.” She created a path for it and let it tween off the right side of the screen. She cried long after it was gone.

No one knows what it would do to a creative brain to think creatively continously. Perhaps the brain, like the heart, must devote most of its time to rest between beats. But I doubt that is true. I hope it is not, because [interactive computers] can give us our first look at unfettered thought. It can allow a decision maker to do almost nothing but decision making, instead of processing data to get into a position to make the decision.

what Danny Hillis is really like, in person

He speaks like the way our eyes read poetry — a few words to a line, then a pause, then a few more words, then another pause. He always gets the beginning of the next thought out before pausing, so there's sort of a tease that more is to come.

There's something about Danny Hillis's voice that's different from every other high tech bigwig I've interviewed; he's not trying to convince me or win me over or spin me. I have found that Silicon Valley executives thrill on debates of the hair-splitting variety - they love Socratic interplay. Arguing is to the CEO brain what the whetstone is to the edge of the knife - it keeps it sharp, ready to make discriminating decisions. They don't answer my questions so much as debug them, correcting the mispresumptions inherent in the question.

Compare this with Danny Hillis. When the thread of our conversation had enough momentum that it could continue without eye contact or head-nodding affirmations, Danny often physically disengaged. We would keep talking, but he would go lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling, maybe stretch his back.

He articulates wonderful metaphors and purposeful anecdotes, each one offered sort of as a gift to the air, floating in space like a cartoonized thought bubble. Danny Hillis likes to talk about solving world hunger, or how to achieve interactive storytelling, or “which will last longer - Mickey Mouse or Walt Disney Incorporated?” These are not solvable queries so much as they are koans to contemplate. Koans free the mind of the rule that everything has to make sense, allowing us to accept the world more for what it is, in all its contradictions.