Thoughts and Notes on Cognition - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 170

FIGURE 1. “L'Ultra Meuble” by Kurt Seligman.
carrying pigeons of the city by importing falcons which would raid the
pigeons' nests for eggs. The golden heart of the Viennese could not stand
the thought of “pigeon infanticide.” Rather, they fed the pigeons twice as
much. When Lorenz pointed out that the result of this would be twice as
many underfed and tuberculosis-carrying pigeons, he had to go, and fast!
Of course, in principle there is nothing wrong with anthropomorphiza-
tions; in most cases they serve as useful algorithms for determining behav-
ior. In trying to cope with a fox it is an advantage to know he is “sly,” that
is, he is a challenge to the brain rather than to the muscles.
Today, with most of us having moved to the big cities, we have lost direct
contact with the animal world, and pieces of steel furniture with some func-
tional properties, the computers, are becoming the objects of our endear-
ments and, consequently, are bestowed now with romanticizing epithets.
Since we live today, however, in an era of science and technology rather
than in one of emotion and sentimentality, the endearing epithets for our
machines are not those of character but of intellect. Although it is quite
possible, and perhaps even appropriate to talk about a “proud IBM 360-50
system,” the “valiant 1800,” or the “sly PDP 8,” I have never observed