In any event, Newman’s hypothesis suggested shortcuts for future code-breakers. For instance, by finding repetitions in letter patterns and grammatical structures, they attempted to match up pages in the typescript to find questions and their corresponding answers. They also attempted to use lists of Alan Turing’s friends and family to guess the name of the interlocutor, and eventually, they found the cyphertext for the name “Christopher”—possibly a reference to Christopher Morcom, the boy Turing had loved when he was sixteen. The young Alan and Christopher had shared a love of science and observed a comet together on a cold winter night. In February of 1930, Christopher, aged only eighteen, died from tuberculosis.
Turing had said that code-breaking required not only clever logical deduction, but also intuitive leaps, which were sometimes more important. In other words, all scientific investigations could be understood to be a combination of the exercise of the dual faculties of intuition and ingenuity. In the end, it was Newman’s intuition and the computer’s cleverly programmed logic that solved the riddle left by Turing. From the deciphered conversations, we learned that “Christopher” was no spirit, but a machine, a conversation program written by Turing himself.
A new question soon presented itself—could Turing’s machine truly respond like a human being? In other words, did Christopher pass the Turing test?
LINDY (2)
iWall was mostly dark, save for a few blinking numbers in the corner notifying me of missed calls and new messages, but I had no time to look at them. I was far too busy to bother with social obligations.
A small blue light lit up, accompanied by a thudding noise as though someone was knocking. I looked up and saw a bright line of large text across iWall.
The therapist told me that Lindy needed sunlight. Her eyes were equipped with photoreceptors that precisely measured the daily dose of ultraviolet radiation she received. Staying cooped up in the house without outdoor activity wasn’t good for recuperation.
I sighed. My head felt heavy, cold, like a lead ball. Taking care of Nocko was already taking a lot out of me, and now I had to deal with—no, no, I couldn’t complain. Complaining resolved nothing. I had to approach this with a positive attitude. No mood was the simple result of external events, but the product of our understanding of external events at the deepest level. This cognitive process often happened subconsciously, like a habit, and was finished before we even realized it was happening. Often we would fall into the clutches of some mood but could not explain why. To change the mood then by an act of will was very difficult.
Take the same half-eaten apple: some would be delighted upon seeing it, but others would be depressed. Those who often felt despondent and helpless had become habituated to associating the remains of a whole apple with all other losses in life.
It was no big deal; just a stroll outside. We’d be back in an hour. Lindy needed sunlight, and I needed fresh air.
I could not summon up the energy to put on makeup, but I also didn’t want everyone to stare at my slovenly appearance after staying cooped up at home for the last few days. As a compromise, I tied my hair into a ponytail, put on a baseball cap, pulled on a hoodie and a pair of sneakers. The hoodie I had bought at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco: “I ♥ SF.” The texture and colors reminded me of that summer afternoon long ago: seagulls, cold wind, boxes of cherries for sale by the wharf, so ripe that the redness seemed to ooze.
I held Lindy’s hand tightly, exited the apartment, rode the elevator down. The tubes and iCart made life easier. To go from one end of the city to the other, to go directly from one high-rise to another, required less than twenty minutes. In contrast, to get out of my building and walk outside required far more effort.
Overcast sky. Light breeze. Very quiet. I walked toward the park behind the building. It was May and the bright spring flowers had already wilted, leaving behind only pure green. The air was suffused with the faint fragrance of black locust trees.
Very few people were in the park. On a weekday afternoon, only the very old and very young would be outside. If one compared the city to an efficient, speedy machine, then they lived in the nooks and crannies of the machine, measuring space with their feet rather than the speed of information. I saw a little girl with pigtails learning to walk with the help of an iVatar nanny. She held the iVatar’s thin, strong fingers with her chubby fists, looking at everything around her. Those dark, lively eyes reminded me of Nocko. As she toddled along, she lost her balance and fell forward. The iVatar nanny nimbly grabbed her and held her up. The girl squealed with delight, as though enjoying the new sensations. Everything in the world was new to her.
Opposite the little girl, an old woman in an electric wheelchair looked up, staring sleepily at the laughing figure for a few seconds. The corners of her mouth drooped, perhaps from moroseness, or perhaps from the weight of the years she had lived through. I couldn’t tell her age—these days, practically everyone was long-lived. After a while, the woman lowered her eyes, her fingers gently cradling her head with its sparse crown of white hair, as though falling asleep.
I had the abrupt feeling that the old woman, myself, and the girl belonged to three distinct worlds. One of those worlds was speeding toward me while the other was receding farther and farther away. But from another perspective, I was the one slowly strolling toward that dark world from which no one ever returned.
Lindy shuffled her feet to keep up with me without saying anything, like a tiny shadow.
“The weather is nice, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Not too hot, and not too cold. Look, dandelions.”
Next to the path, numerous white fuzzy balls swayed in the breeze. I held Lindy’s hand, and we stood there observing them for a while, as though trying to decipher the meaning of those repetitious movements.
Meaning was not reducible to language. But if it couldn’t be spoken about, how could it exist?
“Lindy, do you know why you’re unhappy?” I said. “It’s because you think too much. Consider these wild seeds. They have souls also, but they don’t think at all. All they care about is dancing with their companions in joy. They couldn’t care less where they’re blown by the wind.”
Blaise Pascal said, “Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” However, if reeds could think, what a terrifying existence that would be. A strong wind would fell all the reeds. If they were to worry about such a fate, how would they be able to dance?
Lindy said nothing.
A breeze swept through. I closed my eyes, and felt my hair flapping against my face. Afterward, the seed balls would be broken, but the dandelions would feel no sorrow. I opened my eyes. “Let’s go home.”
Lindy remained where she was. Her ear drooped. I bent down to pick her up and walked back toward the building. Her tiny body was far heavier than I imagined.
ALAN (2)
In a paper titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” published in the journal Mind in October of 1950, Turing considered the question that had long troubled humans: “Can machines think?” In essence, he transformed the question into a new question: “Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?”
For a long time, many scientists firmly held to the belief that human cognition was distinguished by certain characteristics unattainable by machines. Behind the belief was a mixture of religious faith as well as theoretical support from mathematics, logic, and biology. Turing’s approach bypassed unresolvable questions such as the nature of “thinking,” “mind,” “consciousness,” “soul,” and similar concepts. He pointed out that it is impossible for anyone to judge whether another is “thinking” except by comparison of the other with the self. Thus, he proposed a set of experimental criteria based on the principle of imitation.