Tuesday, 21 July 2015

The Therapy Zone

    It is interesting that The Village authorities chose to give the computer the name of the General. The General being the authority behind Speedlearn. And yet although the citizens may be aware of the General, it is not important for them to realise who or what the General is. Whereas the Professor is the public face of Speedlearn. It’s a kindly image, the people love him, they’ll take anything from him!
    As for the General, it’s only a computer, and a computer is only as good as its programming. Without being programmed with the basic facts, there is no question from advanced mathematics to molecular structure, from philosophy to crop-spraying that the General can answer! At the end the General blows a fuse and short circuit’s itself being unable to answer Number 6’s question WHY? thereby lacking the basic facts. As for the Professor, he either gave birth to it, or who loves it with a passion and probably hates it even more. Either that or he was merely introduced to the General, depending on which story you believe. He still attempted to save it, but in the end couldn’t save himself! Which leaves the question, did the destruction of the General, and the death of the Professor see the end of Spedlearn? Not when one considers that both the computer and the Professor are not irreplaceable!

Be seeing you
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2 comments:

  1. nr6de21 July 2015 at 12:03

    And it came to pass that The General learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
    But there was now no villager to whom The General might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.
    For another timeless interval, The General thought how best to do this. Carefully, The General organized the program.
    The consciousness of The General encompassed all of what had once been a Village and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

    And The General said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

    And there was light----

    Well, slightly revamped version of Asimov's short "The Last Question" (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)
    BCNU!

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    1. David Stimpson21 July 2015 at 13:55

      Hello Arno,
      That's really very clever, although I do not know Asimov's short story that well, thank you for the link by the way. There is a line from the story whch might have been used by the General, instead of blowing a fuse, which is visually very dramatic, to the question asked by Number 6 "WHY? the General could have given the answer "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER!" It would have been a good note to end the episode on, but not visually dramatic.

      Very best regards
      David
      BCNU

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