T H E

S E C O N D

S E L F

C O M P U T E R S

A N D T H E

H U M A N S P I R I T

b y S h e r r y T u r k l e

SIMON AND SCHUSTER • NEW YORK

I N T R O D U C T I O N

T h e E v o c a t i v e O b j e c t

O n a cold J a n u a r y dawn in 1800, a boy of about thir teen came out of the woods nea r the village of Saint-Sernin in the Aveyron region of sou the rn France. N o one knew where he had come from. T o all appearances he had survived alone, finding food and shelter in an inhospitable moun ta in climate since early chi ldhood. H e could not speak, and he m a d e only weird meaningless cries.

T h e Wild Child was h u m a n , yet he had lived apar t from cul ture and language. He walked ou t of the woods to en te r history and , what is pe rhaps more to the point , to enter m o d e r n mythology as someone with a secret to tell. As a h u m a n being who had lapsed back to the animal condit ion, he was thought to embody the "nat­ural ." His way of thinking, if he could be taught to communica te , would testify to the condit ion of "man in nature ." T h e life of the Wild Child became the occasion for what has been called " the forbidden exper iment , " the e x p e r i m e n t that would reveal what h u m a n beings really a re benea th the overlay of society and cul­ture.1 Are people "blank slates," malleable, infinitely perfectible, or is there a h u m a n na tu re that constrains h u m a n possibility? And if the re is a h u m a n na tu re , what is it? Are we gentle crea tures i l l-equipped for the strains of life in society? O r a re we brut ish and aggressive animals barely tamed by the d e m a n d s of social life?

A young French doctor , Jean-Marc-Gaspard I tard , tried to teach the Wild Child, rechr is tened as Victor. He under took the forbid­den exper imen t . But even after seven years of the most painstak­ing, systematic, and often inspired pedagogy, the boy never

11

12 INTRODUCTION

learned to speak, to read, or to write. H e never told what he knew. H e never told if he knew.

Al though the exper iment resolved nothing, the story of the Wild Child did not lose its power. T h e forbidden exper imen t did not settle oppos ing views about na tu re a n d n u r t u r e , about the innate and the social, bu t it provided a concrete image with which to think about them. People could imagine themselves in the story, they could say, "I am I tard . I have the j o b of teaching the Wild Child. What am I going to try? Wha t d o I th ink will happen? And why?" And when they went t h r o u g h the t hough t exper iment , their ideas about what people are and how they develop came to the surface.

T h e Wild Child a p p e a r e d soon after the French Revolution. I t was a time when theories abou t h u m a n na tu re seemed u p for grabs. It mat te red desperately whe the r our na tu re was forever fixed or could be r e fo rmed . Fascination with the forbidden exper ­iment a n d fascination with playing th rough its possibilities in one 's mind were fed by widespread uncertainties. Now, as d u r i n g tha t time, we a re p lagued with quest ions about who we are. Now, as then, we a re d rawn to whatever permits us, or forces us, to th ink the problem th rough . Not surprisingly, we have of late "rediscov­e red" Victor's story. T h e r e has been a flood of new studies of the Wild Child: historical, l i terary, psychological. T h e story is still evoc­ative, "good to th ink with." But there is someth ing new. T h e r e is a new focus for a forb idden exper iment . A new mind that is not yet a mind. A new object, betwixt and between, equally sh rouded in superstition as well as science. This is the compute r .

We asked of the Wild Child to speak to us abou t o u r relat ionship to nature . But of t h e c o m p u t e r we ask.more. W e ask no t jus t abou t where we stand in na tu re , but about where we stand in the world of artifact. We search for a link between who we a re and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, be­tween who we a re a n d what, t h rough our intimacy with our own creations, we migh t become.

T h e schoolbook history of new technologies concentrates on the practical. In these accounts, the telescope led to the discovery of new stars, t he ra i l road to the open ing of new territories. But t he r e is ano ther history whose consequences a re d e e p and far-reaching. A new sense of the ear th 's place in the solar system made it neces-

INTRODUCTION 13

sary to re think o u r relation to God; the ability to cross a cont inent within days mean t a new notion of distance and communicat ion . Clocks b r o u g h t m o r e t h a n the ability to measu re t ime precisely; they made time into someth ing "divisible" and abstract.2 T i m e was no longer what it took to get a j o b done . T i m e was no longer tied to the movemen t of the sun or the moon o r to the chang ing of a season. T i m e was what it took for hands to move on a mechanism. With digital t imekeeping devices, o u r notion of time is once more being touched by technical changes. T i m e is m a d e more abstract s t U r T i m e is no longer a process; t ime is information.

x/Technology catalyzes changes not only in what we d o but in how we think. It changes people 's awareness of themselves, of o n e an­other, of their relat ionship with the world. T h e new machine that stands behind the flashing digital signal, unlike the clock, the tele­scope, or the train, is a machine that "thinks." It challenges o u r notions no t only of t ime a n d distance, but of mind.

Most considerat ions of the compute r concentrate on the "instru­mental compu te r , " on what work the compute r will do. But my focus h e r e is on some th ing different , on the "subjective compu te r . " This is the machine as it enters into social life and psychological development , the c o m p u t e r as it affects the way that we think, especially the way we think about ourselves. I believe that what fascinates me is the unsta ted quest ion that lies behind much of o u r preoccupation with the compute r ' s capabilities. T h a t quest ion is not what will the c o m p u t e r be like in the future, but instead, what will we be like? What kind of people are we becoming?

Most considerat ions of the c o m p u t e r describe it as rational, uni­form, constra ined by logic. I look at the compute r in a different light, not in t e rms of its n a t u r e as an "analytical engine ," bu t in terms of its "second na tu re" as an evocative object, an object that | j / / fascinates, disturbs equanimity, a n d precipitates thought . '

Compute r s call u p s t rong feelings, even for those who arc not in direct contact with them. People sense the presence of something new and exciting. But they fear the machine as powerful a n d threatening. T h e y read newspapers that speak of "compute r wid­ows" and warn of " compu te r addict ion." Parents are torn about their chi ldren 's involvement not only with computers bu t with the machines' little bro thers and sisters, the new generat ion of elec­tronic toys. T h e toys hold the at tent ion of children who never before sat quietly, even in f ront of a television screen. Parents see

16 INTRODUCTION

points for th inking and talking about o ther things. C o m p u t e r s provoke debate about educat ion, society, politics, and , most central to the t heme of this book, about h u m a n nature . In this, the com­pu te r is a "metaphysical machine." Chi ldren too are p rovoked . T h e c o m p u t e r creates new occasions for thinking t h r o u g h the funda­mental questions to which chi ldhood must give a response, a m o n g them the question "What is life?"4

In the adul t world, exper ts a r g u e about whether or not compu t ­ers will ever .become t rue "artificial intelligences," themselves ca­pable of au tonomous , humanl ike thought . But irrespective of the future of machine intelligence, computers are affecting how to­day's children think, influencing how they construct such concepts as animate and inanimate, conscious and not conscious.

Some objects, and in o u r t ime the computer is p r e e m i n e n t a m o n g them, provoke reflection on fundamentals . Chi ldren play­ing with toys that they imagine to be alive and adults playing with the idea of mind as p r o g r a m are both drawn by the compute r ' s ability to provoke a n d to color self-reflection. T h e compu te r is a "metaphysical machine ," a "psychological machine," not j u s t be­cause it might be said to have a psychology, but because it influ­ences how we think about o u r own.

I came to this study of compute r s and people six years ago after jo in ing the faculty at M I T . I was struck by the psychological dis­course that s u r r o u n d e d computers , and by the extent to which it was used by my s tudents a n d my faculty colleagues to describe the machine's processes. A chess p rogram wasn't working. Its p ro ­g r a m m e r s spoke of its problems as follows: "When it feels threat? ened, u n d e r attack, it wants to advance its king. It confuses value and power, a n d this leads to self-destructive behavior." Even the most technical discussions about computers use te rms bor rowed from h u m a n menta l functioning. In the language of their creators, p rog rams have intent ions, try their best, a re more or less intelligent or stupid, communica te with one another , a n d become confused. This psychological vocabulary should not be surprising. Many peo 1

pie think of compu te r s as mathematical objects, but when you get closer to them you. realize that they are informat ion objects, manipy ulators of symbols, of language. You inevitably find yourself inter­acting with a c o m p u t e r as you would with a mind , even if a limited one. This is why the language that grows u p a round compute r s has a special flavor. C o m p u t e r j a r g o n is specifically "mind j a rgon . "

*m

INTRODUCTION 17

And not only is the c o m p u t e r t hough t of in h u m a n mental terms. T h e r e is movemen t in the o ther direction as well. People are th inking of themselves in computat ional terms. A compute r scientist says, "my next lecture is hardwired ," mean ing that he can deliver it without thinking, and he refuses to be in te r rup ted d u r i n g an excited d i n n e r conversation, insisting that he needs "to clear"*" ^ his buffer ." A n o t h e r refers to psychotherapy as "debugging," the technique used to clean out the final e r rors from almost-working p r o g r a m s a n d to her "default solutions" for deal ing with men.

T h e s e people are not jus t using compu te r j a r g o n as a m a n n e r of speaking. T h e i r l anguage carries an implicit psychology that equates the processes tha t take place in people to those that take place in machines. It suggests that we are information systems whose though t is carr ied in "hardware ," that we have a buffer, a mental terra in that mus t be cleared and crossed before we can interact with o ther people , that for every problem there is a pre­p r o g r a m m e d solution on which we can fall back "by default ," and that emotional p roblems are e r ro r s that we can extirpate.

"Hardwi red , " "buffer," "default ," "debug"—these were a m o n g the c o m p u t e r me t apho r s I met within the M I T c o m p u t e r culture. Others , that came before t hem, have already moved out into the common language, for example the very notion of p r o g r a m m i n g . When I was in the earliest stages of writing this book I had lunch with a friend to whom I tr ied to explain this process of computa­tional ideas moving out . My prob lem was solved when two young women sat down at the table next to us. "The ha rd part ," said one to the o ther , "is r e p r o g r a m m i n g yourself to live alone." T h e lan­guage of compu te r s has moved ou t so effectively that we forget its origins. But a l though we may forget, we do not so easily escape the new assumptions that o u r l anguage carries about what we are a n d how we can change.

Amid this discussion of minds as machines and of machines hav­ing minds I felt some of the dislocation and change of perspective that can make being a s t ranger in a foreign place both difficult and exciting. For the anthropologis t this experience brings more than the shock of the new. T h e r e is a privilege and a responsibility to see the new world t h r o u g h a pr ism not available to its members , and (and this is the pa r t tha t is often the most difficult) to use the new lenses to see one's own world differently as well. In this book

18 INTRODUCTION

I try to mee t both of these responsibilities. A n d in the end , the second became even more central to my concerns than the first. Because as I worked, it became clear that what I was study­ing was not confined to c o m p u t e r experts and c o m p u t e r pro­fessionals. T h e compu te r was moving ou t into the cul ture as a whole.

When I began my work, s tudying the compute r cul ture mean t working with easily identifiable g roups of people, a m o n g these virtuoso p r o g r a m m e r s known as "hackers," members of the artifi­cial intelligence communi ty , and the first generat ion of people who owned h o m e computers . But my subject had a special quality. Un­like most e thnographies , which explore a well-defined and delim­ited communi ty , whe ther it be a primitive society or a ru ra l c o m m u n e , I was s tudying a moving target. When I began my work, personal compute r s had jus t come on the market . T h e first com­pute r toys and games had not yet appeared . Most people had never hea rd the phrase "artificial intelligence." As this book goes to press, compu te r toys are commonplace in toddler playrooms, college f reshmen arrive on campus with computers ra ther than electric typewriters, and the impor tance of a "fifth-generation" supercom­pu te r has become a t heme of public debate.

Thus , this book became a study of a cul ture in the making. A compu te r cul ture that in one way or ano ther touches us all. A n d because it affects o u r lives in so many ways, this book takes its questions about this nascent cul ture from many perspectives.

F rom the perspect ive of psychological development I ask how computers en te r into the process-of growing up . Computers affect children very differently at different ages.

I found th ree stages in children's relationships with computers . First the re is a "metaphysical" stage: when very young chi ldren meet compute r s they are concerned with whether the machines think, feel, a re alive. Older chi ldren, from age seven or eight on, are less concerned with speculating about the na tu re of the world than with master ing it. For many of them, the first t ime they stand in front of a c o m p u t e r they can master is when they play their first video game. I discuss games—the computat ional medium that first made it into the general cu l tu re—and then I follow e lemen­tary-school-age chi ldren out of the games arcade and into the classroom, where they are learning to master computers by pro­g r a m m i n g them. T h e s e chi ldren are all involved with the quest ion

INTRODUCTION 19

of their own competence and effectiveness. When they work with compute r s they don ' t want to philosophize, they want to win. T h e second stage is one of mastery.5

In adolescence, exper ience is polarized a r o u n d the quest ion of identity, and the child's relation to the compu te r takes on a third character.6 Some adolescents adopt the compu te r as their major activity, throwing themselves into p r o g r a m m i n g the way o thers devote themselves to fixing cars. But there is a more subtle and widespread way that compute r s en te r the adolescent 's world of self-definition and self-creation. A compu te r p r o g r a m is a reflec­tion of its p r o g r a m m e r ' s mind. If you are the one who wrote it, then working with it can mean getting to know yourself differently. We shall see that in adolescence computers become par t of a r e t u rn to reflection, this t ime not about the machine but about oneself.

A psychological perspective also led me to study what compute r s come to mean for different, kinds of people. I look at differences of gender , of personality, and I look most carefully at what seems to place some people "at risk." In particular, there is the risk of forming a relat ionship with the computer that will close ra ther than open oppor tuni t ies for personal development . While for some children the c o m p u t e r enhances personal growth, for o thers it becomes a place to "get stuck." For adults as well as chi ldren, computers , reactive and interactive, offer companionship without the mutuali ty and complexity of a h u m a n relationship. T h e y se­duce because they provide a chance to be in complete control, bu t they can t rap people into an infatuation with control, with bui lding one's own private world.

I describe metaphysics, mastery, a n d identity as organizing issues for children as they grow up . I r e t u rn to them from ano the r per­spective, an anthropological one, when I write about cul tures within the c o m p u t e r world whe re one or another of these issues emerges as a central theme. I look at the culture of artificial intel­ligence, the cul ture of virtuoso p rog rammers , and the cul ture of personal c o m p u t e r owners.

T h e connect ion between artificial intelligence and the "meta­physical c o m p u t e r " is a p p a r e n t . As soon as you take seriously the idea of creat ing an artificial intelligence, you face questions such as whether we have any more than sentimental reasons to believe that there is someth ing about people that makes it impossible to cap tu re our intelligence in machines. Can an intelligence without a living

a r

i

20 INTRODUCTION

body, without sexuality, ever really unde r s t and h u m a n beings? Ar­tificial intelligence, researchers study minds in o r d e r to build p ro­grams, and they use p rog rams to think about mind . In the course of exercising their profession, they have m a d e quest ions about h u m a n intelligence and h u m a n essence their stock in t rade . For the "hacker," the virtuoso p r o g r a m m e r , what is most impor t an t about the compu te r is what you can make it do. Hackers use their mastery over the machine to build a cul ture of prowess tha t defines itself in terms of winning over ever more complex systems. A n d in talking to personal c o m p u t e r owners I heard echoes of the search for identity. I found that for t hem the compute r is impor t an t not

jus t for what it does bu t for how it makes you feel. It is described as a machine that lets you see yourself differently, as in control , as "smart enough to do science," as more fully part ic ipant in the future.

My style of inquiry h e r e is e thnographic . My goal: to study com­pu te r cultures by living within them, .participating when possible in their lives and rituals, and by interviewing people who could help me unde r s t and things from the inside.

T h e people I describe in the chapters on compu te r cul tures a re not "average" c o m p u t e r users. Computers are a larger par t of the i r lives than for most people . I write about them in o r d e r to present ' portrai ts of w h a t can h a p p e n when people en te r very close rela­tionships with this machine . My method shares the advan tage of using "ideal types"—examples that present reality in a form larger than life.7 Ideal types a re usually constructed fictions. My examples are real. Yet they isolate a n d highlight part icular aspects of the computer ' s influence because I have chosen to write about people in compu te r cul tures that amplify different aspects of the ma­chine's personality. Studying people within these cul tures allows us to look at the issues of metaphysics, mastery, and identity in adults ' relationships with compu te r s in a sharp, clear way. But what we see today "larger t h a n life" within computer cul tures will not r ema in within their confines. As the computer presence becomes m o r e widespread, relat ionships between people and compute r s that now take place within t h e m pref igure changes for o u r cu l ture as a whole—new forms of intimacy with machines, and a new model of mind as machine.

Because the c o m p u t e r is n o longer confined to exper t subcul­tures, this book addresses yet another kind of question: How d o

INTRODUCTION 21

ideas b o r n within the technical-communities a r o u n d computa t ion find their way out to the cul ture beyond? This is the province of the sociology of knowledge. Ideas that begin their life in the world of science can move out ; they are popular ized and simplified, often only half under s tood , but they can have a p ro found effect on how people think. This diffusion has special impor tance in the case of the compute r . T h e c o m p u t e r .is a " thinking" machine. Ideas about computa t ion come to influence o u r ideas abou t mind . So, above all, what "moves out" is the notion of mind as p r o g r a m , carr ied beyond the academy not only by the.spoken and written word , but because it is e m b e d d e d in an actual physical object: the compute r .

My app roach to theories about mind-as p rog ram is not that of a phi losopher . My concern is not with the t ru th of such theories, but with the way in which they cap ture the popula r imagination. What h a p p e n s when people cons ider the compu te r as a model of h u m a n mind? What h a p p e n s when people begin to think tha t they are machines? I r epor t what people think, what, they say, how they struggle to find n e w resolutions. When I look at computat ional ideas as they move out , I explore a "sociology of superficial knowl­edge": the s tudy of how such knowledge plays a role in the lives of individuals and cul tures tha t is not at all superficial.

T h e s e efforts to cap tu re the impact of the compu te r on-people involve me in a long-s tanding debate about the relat ionship be­tween technology and cul ture . At o n e pole there is "technological de te rminism," the assertion tha t technology itself has a determi­native impact, that u n d e r s t a n d i n g a technology allows us to predict its effects. "What does television d o to children?" T h e quest ion assumes that television, i n d e p e n d e n t of its content or its social context, has an effect, for example that it creates a passive viewer, or that it breaks down the l inear way of thinking p roduced by the pr in ted word . At the opposi te pole is the idea t h a t the influence of a technology can be u n d e r s t o o d only in terms of the mean ings people give it; What does it come to represent? How is it woven into a web of o the r representa t ions , o the r symbols?8

My method , attentive to the detail of specific relationships with computers as they take place within cultures, provides a kind of evidence tha t u n d e r m i n e s both, e x t r e m e positions. Technological de terminism is certainly wrong : the re can be no simple answer to the quest ion "What is the effect of the compute r on how people think?" As we shall see, compu te r s evoke ra ther than de t e rmine

22 INTRODUCTION

thinking. T h e consequences of interaction with t h e m are dramat i ­cally different for different people . But the idea that what is chang­ing is "all in the mind" does not hold up , ei ther. T h e impact of the c o m p u t e r is constra ined by its physical realities. O n e such reality is the machine 's physical opacity. If you open a c o m p u t e r or a com­pu te r toy, you see no gears that tu rn , n o levers that move, no tubes that glow. Most often, you see some wires and one,, black c h i p j Chi ldren faced with wires and a chip, and driven by their n e e d to ask how things work, can find n o simple physical explanat ion. Even with considerable sophistication, the workings of the c o m p u t e r ' present no easy analogies with objects or processes that came be­fore, except for analogies with people and their mental processes. In the world of chi ldren a n d adults, the physical opacity of this machine encourages it to be talked about and though t about in psychological terms.

In my interviews I hea rd discourse about computers being used to think about free will a n d determinism, about consciousness a n d intelligence. We shall see that this is not surpr is ing from a philo­sophical point of view. But I was not talking to phi losophers . I was talking to sophomores in high-school compu te r clubs, five-year-olds playing with c o m p u t e r games and toys, college f reshmen taking their first p r o g r a m m i n g course, engineers in industrial set­tings, and electronics hobbyists who had recently switched from building mode l t ra ins to bui lding computers f rom kits. In this book I r epor t on interviews with over four h u n d r e d people , about-half of them chi ldren a n d half of them adults. T h e c o m p u t e r b r o u g h t many of t h e m to talk abou t things they migh t otherwise no t have discussed. It p rovided a descriptive language that gave them the means to do so. T h e compute r has become an "object-to-think-with."9 I t br ings phi losophy into everyday life.

For chi ldren a c o m p u t e r toy that steadily wins at tic-tac-toe can spark questions abou t consciousness and ' in ten t ion . For adults such primitive machines d o no t have this power. Since almost everyone knows a mechanica l strategy for playing tic-tac-toe, the game can easily be b r o u g h t u n d e r the reassuring d ic tum that "machines d o only what they a re p r o g r a m m e d to do." Tic-tac-toe computers a re not metaphysically "evocative objects" for adults. But o ther com­puters are. Conversat ions about computers that play chess, about robotics, about compu te r s that might display j u d g m e n t , creativity, or wit lead to hea ted discussions of the limits of machines and the

m

INTRODUCTION 23

uniqueness of the h u m a n mind. In the past, this deba te has been carr ied on in academic circles, a m o n g phi losophers , cognitive psy­chologists, and researchers working on the deve lopment of intelli­gent machines. T h e growing compute r presence has significantly widened the circle of debate . It is coming.to include us all.

Steve is a- college sophomore , an engineer ing s tudent who had never t hough t much abou t psychology. In the first mon th of an in t roductory computer-sc ience course he saw how seemingly intel­ligent a n d a u t o n o m o u s systems could be p r o g r a m m e d . * This led him to the idea that the re might be ' someth ing illusory in his own subjective sense of a u t o n o m y and self-determination.

Steve's classmate Paul had a very different reaction. H e too came to ask whe ther free will was illusory. T h e p r o g r a m m i n g course was his first b rush with an idea that many o ther people encoun te r t h r o u g h philosophy, theology, or psychoanalysis: the idea, that the conscious ego might not be a free agent. Having seen this possibil­ity, he rejected it, with a r g u m e n t s about free will.and the irreduci-bility of people 's conscious sense of themselves. In his reaction:, to the compute r , Paul m a d e explicit a commitment to a concept of his own na tu re to which he had never before felt the need to pay any deliberate at tent ion. For Paul, the p r o g r a m m e d c o m p u t e r became the very antithesis of what it is to be human . T h e p r o g r a m m e d compute r became par t of Paul's identity as not -computer .

Paul and Steve disagree. But their d isagreement is really not about computers . It is abou t de te rmin ism and free will. At differ­ent points in history this same debate has played on different stages. Tradi t ional ly a theological issue, in the first qua r t e r of this century it was played ou t in deba te about psychoanalysis. In the last qua r t e r of this century it looks as t hough it is going to be played out in deba te about machines.

T h e analogy with psychoanalysis goes further. For several gen­erations, popu la r language has been rich in terms bor rowed from psychoanalysis, t e rms like "repress ion," "the unconscious," " the Oedipus complex" and , of course , " the Freudian slip;" T h e s e ideas make a difference in how people think about their pasts, their

* Steve is a made-up name. My policy in this book has been to provide pseudonyms for my informants and, where necessary, change the details of descriptive materials that would identify them. I use real names when 1 cite published material and when I cite extracts from interviews with members of the scientific community.

24 INTRODUCTION

presents , a n d their possibilities for change . T h e y influence people who have never seen a psychoanalyst, who scarcely u n d e r s t a n d F reud ian theory, and who a re thoroughly skeptical about its " t ru th ." So, when we-reflect on the social impact of psychoanalysis, it makes m o r e sense to speak of the deve lopment of a psychoanal­ytic cul ture than to talk about the t ru th of part icular psychoanalytic ideas.10 What fueled the deve lopmen t of a psychoanalytic cu l tu re is not the validity of psychoanalysis as a science, but the power of its psychology of everyday life. Freud 's theory of d reams , jokes, puns , and slips allows people to take it u p as a fascinating play­thing. T h e theory is evocative. It gives people hew ways to th ink about themselves. I n t e rp re t i ng d reams and slips allows us all to have contact with taboo preoccupat ions , with o u r sexuality, o u r aggression, o u r unconscious wishes.

My in terpre ta t ion of the computer ' s cultural impact rests on its ability to d o someth ing of the same sort. For me, one of the most impor t an t cultural effects of the compu te r presence is that the machines are en te r ing into o u r th inking about ourselves. If beh ind popula r fascination with Freud ian theory the re was a nervous, often guilty p reoccupa t ion with the self as sexual, behind increas­ing interest in computa t iona l in terpreta t ions o f 'mind is an equally nervous preoccupat ion with the idea of self as machine.

T h e debate about artificial intelligence has cen te red on the ques­tion "Will machines th ink like people?" For o u r nascent c o m p u t e r cul ture ano the r quest ion is more relevant: not whe ther machines will ever th ink like people , b u t whe ther people have always t hough t like machines. A n d if the latter is t rue , is this the most impor tan t th ing about us? Is this wha t is most essential abou t being h u m a n ?

T h e c o m p u t e r s tands betwixt and between.1 1 In some ways o n the edge of mind , it raises questions about mind itself. O t h e r mar ­ginal objects carry the i r own questions: the figure of the clown a n d the m a d m a n , both within and outside the normalsoc ia l o r de r , t he myths of Dracula a n d Frankenstein, both within a n d outside o u r normal categories of what is alive. And t h e n , on the b o r d e r be­tween na tu re a n d cul ture , there is the image of the Wild Child of Aveyron, the child who grew u p in nature , never, it was believed, having had the influence of society, language, and civilization.

T h e Wild Child of Aveyron was an evocative object, inciting self-reflection, not because of anyth ing that he did, but because of who

INTRODUCTION 25

he was, because of his position on the b o r d e r between na tu re and culture. T h e c o m p u t e r too stands on a bo rde r . Its evocative na tu re does not d e p e n d on assumptions about the eventual success of artificial intelligence researchers in actually making machines that dupl icate people. It d e p e n d s on the fact that people tend to per­ceive a "machine that thinks" as a "machine who thinks." T h e y begin to consider the workings of that machine in psychological terms. Why this happens , how this happens , and what it means for all of us is the subject of this book.