Xavier’s Reviews > 2001: A Space Odyssey > Status Update

Then, if
he felt like it, he would spend a couple of hours either reading or looking at a
movie; and at midnight he would go to sleep - usually without any help from
electronarcosis. Poole's program was a mirror image of his own, and the two
schedules dovetailed together without friction.
Both men were fully occupied, they were too intelligent and well-adjusted
to quarrel, and the voyage had settled down to a

Artificial brains could be grown by a process strikingly analogous to
the development of a human brain. In any given case, the precise details would
never be known, and even if they were, they would be millions of times too
complex for human understanding. Whatever way it worked, the final result was
a machine intelligence that could reproduce - some philosophers still preferred to
use the word “mimic” - most of

With its
advent, it was clear that artificial intelligences at least as powerful as Man's need
be no larger than office desks - if one only knew how to construct them.
Probably no one would ever know this; it did not matter. In the 1980s,
Minsky and Good had shown how neural networks could be generated
automatically - self replicated - in accordance with any arbitrary learning
program. Artificial brains could

Michaels shook his head. “Out of the question,” he protested. “You can't
have very small, intelligent creatures; you need a minimum brain size.”
Michaels and Halvorsen, Floyd had noticed, usually took opposing
viewpoints, yet there appeared to be little personal hostility or friction between
them. They seemed to respect each other, and simply agreed to disagree.

Accidents, crimes,
natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still
seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the
ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers
of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic
headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the
more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes,
natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still
seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the
ether. Yet Floyd also wond

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more
convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be
replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been
to Caxton or Gutenber

(That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover
into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour;
even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime
doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the
news satellites.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology
behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he
was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour,
yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-
stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could
read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete
page and select a new subject for detailed examination.
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology
behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfec