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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (68264)	8/29/2005 3:59:32 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Maurice Re: "left behind by IT" That very concept bears upon another pretty well worked over science fiction theme, that of the thinking machine or the machine with an emotional nature of some sort. Of course the distant future could bring anything, but do you discern the beginnings of some sort of machine intelligence? I sure don't, at least so far. As useful a gadget as my computer can be, I don't see the thing as a bit more life-like than a crosscut saw or an acetylene torch. It is just a dumb machine. You say "while cyberspace has 'need' of human services" and that implies at least a primitive set of emotions on the part of the various machine elements of cyberspace. But these machine elements are just inanimate objects, with no more self-preceived 'need' or any other emotion than a rock pile. Now that may change in a million or a thousand years, and if you were speaking of a collection of living things, say a forest or school of fish, well that is another matter. But a bunch of late 20th century machines? I don't think so. And when you say "working in cyberspace" could you not just as easily have inserted "working in the oil industry" or "working in films"? In any of these cases it would be the tycoons making the big bucks doleing out the pay to the underlings, not "cyberspace". Just a thought. Slagle