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The Compleat Computer
Book by Shaplen, Robert
216 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1976
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August 20, 2021
This is a collection of essays from other sources, such as The Wall Street Journal, Science, the Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Review, and Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers. There are also occasional cartoons, including a Doonesbury on the first page of each chapter except the final chapter. Each involves Mark’s summer job with a computer company.
There are a handful of science fiction short stories involving computers, including Ray Bradbury’s classic “There Will Come Soft Rains” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Of course there’s also an excerpt from 2001 dealing with HAL.
The entries are much more mainstream than other computer news collections of its time such as Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Which means that their description of the CalTech McDonald’s sting is much more prosaic, but still is obviously the event that inspired Hollyfeld’s scheme in Real Genius.
There are a couple of articles on Weizenbaum’s Eliza, including one by Weizenbaum himself and one by Vincent Cerf in which Eliza is interfaced with Parry the simulated paranoid.
Most of the predictions were either completely off, or so stuck in the past as to be more wishful thinking than predictions. But some were close and and also completely wrong, such as the prediction that vending machine computing, where people paid $1.00 an hour to use computer terminals to “play games, draw computer-aided pictures, or write programs” and “Staff are around to monitor the room and answer questions” led to the prediction that:
Which we did—except that the computer halls that teenagers hung around in were literally a replacement for pinball alley. Some were literally named Pinball Alley or some variation on it. We did very little programming or drawing pictures, but a whole lot of playing games. There were no terminals hooked to remote computers—every device was its own computer. Within three years (this book is copyright 1976) we had Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, and Lunar Lander.
Other predictions were just plain weird. Gregory Benford and David Book, for example, that the computerized home will be fully centralized:
And later on the same page:
There will never be a vacuum cleaner that cleans the house by itself but there will be intelligent self-programming machines in fifteen years. They wrote that in 1971. Their “never” started happening in 1996 with the Electrolux Trilobite. Their “15 years”, a HAL-like (their example) self-programming machine, did not, as far as I know, happen by 1986.
Although I’m pretty sure that their “virtually all computer experts” was a very tiny subset of computer experts. But there may have been a touch of wish fulfillment in that prediction as well.
They ended their article with a quote from “Computer-memory specialist Ross Quillian”:
That is, no worries, when the computers take over and we die out, it’ll still be intelligent life.
One of the more fascinating essays is Turing’s “The Imitation Game” from 1950. In it, Turing describes a game in which an interrogator tries to decide which responder is human and which is a computer. The difference in how this is normally described is that the human is trying to be a human, and the computer is trying through misrepresentation of the truth or outright lying to lead the interrogator astray.
Another of the fascinatingly wrong yet right predictions is Senator Sam Ervin’s that, with the ever-increasing data retention on people’s lives,
Ervin was looking at this (delivered as a speech in June 1973) from the perspective of the Executive Branch using a “master computer” to collect data and dole it out “to those who have no right or reason to have it”. Today we would call this social media, except that we give such sites the right to hand the data out to anyone they want.
The nature of the book, a collection of essays from a wide period, means that some predictions had already mostly failed. For example, there’s an interview with Dr. Norbert Weiner from the U.S. News & World Report in 1964. Within the interview, he seems to predict that “the next decade or so will see this used technically”, where “this” is nucleic-acid based memory. By the time this collection was published, we were already twelve years from that prediction.
Throughout these pages, there is a sense of the future that is firmly rooted in the present and unable to shed it. In the final chapter, there’s a set of “opposing views” for what information technology means for a free society; two scenarios are presented, each meant to be a plausible society, one open, one closed. The assumption is that by the year 2000 society will be “information rich”, and
We can certainly quibble with whether “all” the information existed in electronic form, or whether the year 2000 Internet was as transparent as the telephone system, and how prevalent voice recognition was. But it’s not a bad set of assumptions. From those assumptions, Murray Turoff extrapolates a “closed” information-rich society, basically a totalitarian society, and an “open” information-rich society, basically a free society.
But his free society is extremely centralized. Education is managed by the central computer, educational opportunities are authorized by the central computer through prerequisite qualifications, what we would now call gig jobs and online auctions is handled by a central computer, even home buying and vacation home trades are managed through the central computer.
In this utopian open society, taxes are all handled for us through a central computer, and when the central computer makes a mistake, the central computer happily refunds the money to us without any action on our part necessary to bring the mistake to its attention.
Everything is presented as voluntary advice, but also with very little likelihood of refusal of the advice. Throughout the era, before (in the United States) the surprise election of Ronald Reagan and (in Europe) the surprise collapse of the Soviet Union, there was this sense that communist-style socialism was inevitable, that even free societies were better off centrally managed with rolling five-year plans from infallible central expert committees. I expect this is a reflection of that mindset.
There are a handful of science fiction short stories involving computers, including Ray Bradbury’s classic “There Will Come Soft Rains” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Of course there’s also an excerpt from 2001 dealing with HAL.
The entries are much more mainstream than other computer news collections of its time such as Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Which means that their description of the CalTech McDonald’s sting is much more prosaic, but still is obviously the event that inspired Hollyfeld’s scheme in Real Genius.
There are a couple of articles on Weizenbaum’s Eliza, including one by Weizenbaum himself and one by Vincent Cerf in which Eliza is interfaced with Parry the simulated paranoid.
Most of the predictions were either completely off, or so stuck in the past as to be more wishful thinking than predictions. But some were close and and also completely wrong, such as the prediction that vending machine computing, where people paid $1.00 an hour to use computer terminals to “play games, draw computer-aided pictures, or write programs” and “Staff are around to monitor the room and answer questions” led to the prediction that:
The computer vending machine is probably the replacement for the pinball machine of the past. Instead of hanging around the pinball alley or pool hall, the next group of teenagers will probably be hanging around the local computer hall.
Which we did—except that the computer halls that teenagers hung around in were literally a replacement for pinball alley. Some were literally named Pinball Alley or some variation on it. We did very little programming or drawing pictures, but a whole lot of playing games. There were no terminals hooked to remote computers—every device was its own computer. Within three years (this book is copyright 1976) we had Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, and Lunar Lander.
Other predictions were just plain weird. Gregory Benford and David Book, for example, that the computerized home will be fully centralized:
It is impractical to build individual appliances with self-contained circuitry more intricate than that required to allow an oven to turn itself off when the roast is done. That’s why we will never have vacuum cleaners that clean the house by themselves or dishwashers that clear the table, wash and put away the dishes where they belong. These tasks require too many diction processes and too many different operations to build into a small inexpensive machine. But wire all the household gadgets to a large flexible computer, and they become a staff of docile chambermaids and kitchen knaves.
And later on the same page:
Virtually all computer experts are agreed that we have only about 15 years until an essentially new form of intelligent life is born on this planet: a self-programming machine.
There will never be a vacuum cleaner that cleans the house by itself but there will be intelligent self-programming machines in fifteen years. They wrote that in 1971. Their “never” started happening in 1996 with the Electrolux Trilobite. Their “15 years”, a HAL-like (their example) self-programming machine, did not, as far as I know, happen by 1986.
Although I’m pretty sure that their “virtually all computer experts” was a very tiny subset of computer experts. But there may have been a touch of wish fulfillment in that prediction as well.
Like women, computers make excellent servants but they are far more interesting as companions and equals.
They ended their article with a quote from “Computer-memory specialist Ross Quillian”:
My loyalties go to intelligent life, no matter in what medium it may arise.
That is, no worries, when the computers take over and we die out, it’ll still be intelligent life.
One of the more fascinating essays is Turing’s “The Imitation Game” from 1950. In it, Turing describes a game in which an interrogator tries to decide which responder is human and which is a computer. The difference in how this is normally described is that the human is trying to be a human, and the computer is trying through misrepresentation of the truth or outright lying to lead the interrogator astray.
Another of the fascinatingly wrong yet right predictions is Senator Sam Ervin’s that, with the ever-increasing data retention on people’s lives,
Some experts in the field of information systems have suggested that massive data collection on every detail of each individual’s life poses the danger of creating an “information prison” in which the individual is forever constrained by his past words and actions.
Ervin was looking at this (delivered as a speech in June 1973) from the perspective of the Executive Branch using a “master computer” to collect data and dole it out “to those who have no right or reason to have it”. Today we would call this social media, except that we give such sites the right to hand the data out to anyone they want.
The nature of the book, a collection of essays from a wide period, means that some predictions had already mostly failed. For example, there’s an interview with Dr. Norbert Weiner from the U.S. News & World Report in 1964. Within the interview, he seems to predict that “the next decade or so will see this used technically”, where “this” is nucleic-acid based memory. By the time this collection was published, we were already twelve years from that prediction.
Throughout these pages, there is a sense of the future that is firmly rooted in the present and unable to shed it. In the final chapter, there’s a set of “opposing views” for what information technology means for a free society; two scenarios are presented, each meant to be a plausible society, one open, one closed. The assumption is that by the year 2000 society will be “information rich”, and
…all the information generated by society and needed for its operation exists in electronic form. The collection, processing, transmission, distributing, storage, and retrieval of information on a day-to-day basis takes place on a largely “self-generating and sustaining” basis. The information centers, the networks tying them together, and the procedures governing their use are sufficiently compatible that they may be viewed jointly as a single nationwide information complex largely transparent to the users and their applications—such as the telephone system is today. Terminals exist in every home, voice recognition is a common form of computer input, mass on-line storage is cheap and plentiful, and other similar marvels of technology (by today’s standards) abound.
We can certainly quibble with whether “all” the information existed in electronic form, or whether the year 2000 Internet was as transparent as the telephone system, and how prevalent voice recognition was. But it’s not a bad set of assumptions. From those assumptions, Murray Turoff extrapolates a “closed” information-rich society, basically a totalitarian society, and an “open” information-rich society, basically a free society.
But his free society is extremely centralized. Education is managed by the central computer, educational opportunities are authorized by the central computer through prerequisite qualifications, what we would now call gig jobs and online auctions is handled by a central computer, even home buying and vacation home trades are managed through the central computer.
In this utopian open society, taxes are all handled for us through a central computer, and when the central computer makes a mistake, the central computer happily refunds the money to us without any action on our part necessary to bring the mistake to its attention.
Everything is presented as voluntary advice, but also with very little likelihood of refusal of the advice. Throughout the era, before (in the United States) the surprise election of Ronald Reagan and (in Europe) the surprise collapse of the Soviet Union, there was this sense that communist-style socialism was inevitable, that even free societies were better off centrally managed with rolling five-year plans from infallible central expert committees. I expect this is a reflection of that mindset.
A Programmer’s Lament
I really hate this damned machine;
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want,
But only what I tell it.
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