Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
T H E A D A P T I V E B R A I N
The making of a synTheTic brain requires now liTTle more Than Time
and labour. . . . such a machine mighT be used in The disTanT fuTure
. . . To explore regions of inTellecTual subTleTy and complexiTy aT
presenT beyond The human powers. . . . how will iT end? i suggesT
ThaT The simplesT way To find ouT is To make The Thing and see.
Ross Ashby,
“design for a brain” (1948, 382-83)
On 13 December 1948, the
Daily Herald
carried a front-page article entitled
“The Clicking Brain Is Cleverer Than Man's,” featuring a machine called
the homeostat built by W. Ross Ashby. Soon the rest of the press in Britain
and around the world followed suit. In the United States, an article in
Time
magazine, “The Thinking Machine,” appeared on 24 January 1949 (p. 66),
and by 8 March 1949 Ashby was holding forth on BBC radio on “imitating
the brain.” At much the same time, W. Grey Walter appeared on BBC televi-
sion showing off a couple of small robots he had built, Elmer and Elsie, the
first examples of his robot “tortoises,” or, more pretentiously, of a new in-
organic species,
Machina speculatrix
. One appeared in a family photo in
Time
(fig. 1.1).
In 1952, Gordon Pask began work on his Musicolour machine—an
electromechanical device that collaborated in obscure ways with a musician
to generate a synesthetic light show. Soon he was also experimenting with
