seemingly grown-up, but irresponsible. And when I'm with you I turn into a
silly schoolgirl.... Val, where's Victor. What happened to him? Listen," she
asked, her eyes growing wide, "is it true that he's a spy?"
"Victor? What Victor?"
"Are you joking? Victor Kravets, your assistant and nephew twice
removed."
"Nephew, lab assistant...." Krivoshein was momentarily confused. "So
that's it!"
Lena threw up her hands.
"Val, what's the matter with you? You can tell me. What happened in the
lab?"
"Forgive me, Lena, I just got confused. Of course, old Peter, I mean
Victor Kravets, my trusty assistant and nephew ... a very nice guy...." The
woman still regarded him wide-eyed. "Don't be surprised, Lena, this is just
a momentary amnesia, that always happens after... after an electric shock.
It'll pass, it's not serious. So you say the rumor's begun that he's a spy?
Ah, that Academy of Sciences!"
"Then it's true that there was a catastrophe in the lab? Why, why do
you keep everything from me? You could have been-no! I don't want to think
about it!"
"Stop, please God, stop!" Krivoshein said irritably, sitting down.
"Could have, couldn't have, did, wasn't.... You see, everything is fine. (I
wish it were, he thought.) I can't tell you anything until I've figured it
all out myself." He moved into an attack. "And what's your problem? So,
there's one Krivoshein more or less in the world-big deal! You're young,
beautiful, childless-you'll find someone else, someone better than an aging
codger like me. Take Peter, I mean, Victor Kravets: he's better for you?"
"Again?" she smiled, came up behind his chair, and put his head on her
bosom. "Why do you keep harping on Victor? I don't need him. I don't care
how good-looking he is; he's not you, understand? That's it. And the others
aren't you either. Now I know for sure."
"Hm?" Krivoshein untangled himself.
"What, 'hm'? You're jealous, silly. I didn't sit at home every night
like a nun. I went out. I was courted, even seriously by some. And still,
they were all wrong!" Her voice caressed him. "They're not like you-and
that's it! I came back to you anyway."
Krivoshein felt the warmth of her body with the back of his neck, felt
her soft hands on his eyes and experienced an incomparable bliss. "I could
sit like this forever. I've just come back from work, and nothing has
happened . . . and I'm tired and she's here . . . but something did happen!
Something very serious happened, and I'm sitting here stealing her
caresses!"
He got up.
"All right, Lena. You'll excuse me, but I'm not going to walk you home.
I'll just sit a while or go to sleep. I don't feel very well after all
that."
"I'll stay?"
It was half question, half statement. For a second Krivoshein was
overwhelmed with wild jealousy. "I'll stay?" she used to say and he would
agree. Or maybe he suggested it himself: "Stay tonight, Lena." And she
stayed.
"No, Lena, you go home." He laughed bitterly.
"That means you're still mad, right?" She looked at him and got mad.
"You're a fool, Val, a real jerk! The hell with you!" And she turned for the
door.
Krivoshein stood in the middle of the room, listening: the click of the
lock, Lena's heels on the stairs, the downstairs door slamming, quick light
steps on the pavement. He ran to the balcony to call to her-and the evening
breeze sobered him up. "So, I see her, and fall back in just like that! I
wonder what she said to him? All right, the hell with last year's romances!"
He went back inside. "I have to find out what happened here. Wait! He must
have a diary! Of course!"
Krivoshein pulled open all the drawers in the desk, tossing out
magazines, folders, quickly glancing through notebooks. No, that's not it.
On the bottom of the last drawer he found a cassette, a quarter filled, and
for a minute he forgot about his search: he got the cassette player from the
shelf, dusted it off, put in the cassette, and turned it on playback.
"With the rights of the discoverers," a hoarse voice began, after some
hissing, carelessly slurring the endings of words, "we are taking it upon
ourselves to research and exploit the discovery to be called-"
"The artificial biological synthesis of information," another voice
(though remarkably like the first) added. "It's not particularly euphonious,
but it's accurate."
"Fine. The artificial biological synthesis of information. We
understand that this discovery touches upon man's life like no other and is
capable of becoming the greatest threat or the greatest boon for mankind. We
swear to do everything in our power to use this discovery for the good of
humanity."
"We swear that until we have researched all the potentials of this
discovery-"
"And until it is clear to us how to use it with absolute reliability
for the good of humanity-" "Not to turn it over into anyone else's hands-"
"And not to publish anything about it."
Krivoshein stood with his eyes closed. He was transported to that May
night when they made that vow.
"We vow not to give away our discovery for our well-being, or fame, or
immortality until we are sure that it cannot be used to harm people. We will
destroy our work rather than permit that."
"We swear!" The two voices spoke in unison. The tape ended.
"We were hotheads then. So, the diary must be nearby." Krivoshein dove
into the desk once more, rummaged about, and a second later held a notebook
with a yellow cardboard cover, as thick and heavy as a book. There was
nothing written on the cover, but Krivoshein was certain that he had found
what he was after: a year ago, when he got to Moscow, he had bought himself
the exact same notebook in a yellow cover to keep his own diary.
He sat down at the desk, moved the lamp closer, lit a cigarette, and
opened the notebook.
The relativity of knowledge is a great thing. The statement "two plus
two equals thirteen" is relatively closer to the truth than "two plus two
equals forty-one." You could even say that the move to the former from the
latter represents an expression of creative maturity, scholarly courage, and
unheard-of scientific progress-if you didn't know that two plus two equals
four.
We know that in arithmetic, but it's too soon to rejoice. For example,
in physics, two plus two equals less than four because of a defect in mass.
And in such fine sciences as sociology or ethics, not even two plus two, but
even one plus one can be either a future family or a conspiracy to rob a
bank.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 5
May 22. Today I saw him off at the train. In the station restaurant,
the customers stared at two grown twins. I felt uncomfortable. He was happy.
"Remember, fifteen years ago, I-no, I guess it was you-left for the
exams at the physics-technological institute? It was all the same: a streak
of alienation, freedom, uncertainty...."
I remembered. Yes, it was the same. The same waiter with an expression
of chronic dissatisfaction with life served tenth-graders who had escaped
into life. Then we thought that everything was ahead of us; and so it was.
And now there is quite a bit behind us: happy things, and gray things, and
things that make it scary to look back, and yet it still seems that the best
and most interesting is ahead.
Then we drank the cheapest port. Now the waiter brought us fine cognac.
We each had a glass.
It was noisy and crowded in the restaurant. People were eating and
drinking in a rush.
"Look," my double pointed out, "a mother feeding twins. Greetings,
colleagues! Look at their eyes. How do you think they'll turn out? For now
their mother is taking care of them, and even so they managed to smear
porridge all over their faces in the same way. But in a few years another
bustling mother will take over-Life. One, say, will grab a chicken by the
tail and pull out all the feathers. The first in a collection of
unrepeatable impressions, since there will be no feathers left for the other
to pull. But the other will get lost in a store with great weeping and
wailing-another personal, unique experience. And a year later his mother
will let him have it for the jam that his brother gobbled up. Again
differences: one will sense injustice while the other is getting away
without punishment. Oh, mama, watch it. If things go on like that, one of
them will grow up to be a timid loser, and the other a sly fellow who gets
away with everything. You'll cry then, mama. You and I are like those
twins."
"Well, at least an unfair spanking won't knock us off the track. We're
at the wrong age."
"I'll drink to that!"
They announced the train. We went out to the platform. He went on
talking.
"You know what's interesting? What happens to that old saw about people
being born with a destiny? Let's say that it was intended at your birth for
you to move through space and time at a certain rate, to advance at work,
etc. And suddenly-abracadabra!-there are two Krivosheins! And they lead
separate lives in separate cities. Now what happens to the divine plan? Or
did God write it in two variants? And what if we turn into ten? And what if
we don't want to, and don't?" We both made believe that something ordinary
was happening. "Friends, check to see that you haven't kept the departing
passengers' tickets by mistake!" I hadn't. The train took him to Moscow.
We agreed to write to each other when necessary (I'll bet that he won't
feel that necessity very soon!) and to meet next July. We'll spend this year
approaching the problem from two angles; he'll take biology, and I'll take
systemology. We'll see....
When the train left I realized that I would miss him. I guess because
this was the first time that I had felt as comfortable with another person
as I do with ... with myself. There's no other way of putting it. Even
between Lena and me there is always something left unsaid, misunderstood,
strictly personal. But with him... but even with him, we each developed our
own secrets over a month of living together. Interesting, that bustling
mother life!
I was high on cognac, and coming back from the station I stared at
people and at life. Women with concerned, anxious faces entering stores.
Guys riding on motorcycles with girls on the back seat. Lines forming by the
newspaper kiosks, waiting for the evening papers. Human faces, how different
they all are, how understandable and mysterious! I can't explain how it
happens, but I seem to know about a lot of them. The corners of the mouth,
harsh or fine wrinkles, the bearing of the head, and the eyes-especially the
eyes!-they are all signs of preverbal information. Probably from the days
when we were apes.
Just recently I did not notice such things. I did not notice, for
instance, that people waiting in line were ugly. The banality and
meaninglessness of such an occupation, the worry that they will run out,
that someone will sneak in ahead of them, leaves an ugly imprint on the
face. And drunks are ugly, and brawlers are ugly.
But take a look at a young girl, laughing at a joke made by the boy she
loves. Or at a mother, nursing a child. At a master craftsman doing fine
work. At a good man thinking about something. They are beautiful, despite
pimples, wrinkles, and lines.
I could never appreciate beauty in animals. As far as I'm concerned
only man is beautiful-and then only when he is human.
A toddler stared at me as though I were a miracle, tripped and fell,
insulted by earth's pull. His mother, naturally, added to his pain. The
little guy suffered for nothing. What kind of marvel am I? Just a man
getting fat, with a round back, and a common face.
But maybe the little fellow was right: I'm really a miracle? And every
person is a miracle?
What do we know about people? What do I know about myself? In the
problem called life, people are a given that does not have to be proved. And
everyone who uses that given comes up with his own theory. Take my double,
for instance. He left and that was both unexpected and logical.
But wait! If I'm going to get into this, I should start at the
beginning.
It's funny to remember. Actually, I began with the simplest of
intentions. To do my dissertation.
But creating something secondhand and compilatory (sort of like the
topic recommended to me by my former chief professor Voltampernov, "Several
Peculiarities in Projecting Diode Memory Systems") was boring and repulsive.
I was human after all. I wanted an unsolved problem, to get into its soul
and to investigate nature with the help of reason, machines, and apparatus.
And to discover something that no one had ever known. Or to invent something
that no one else ever had thought of. And to be asked questions at the
defense that would be fun to answer. And then to be told by friends, "Well,
you really let them have it! Terrific!"
All the more because I can do that. It's not something you announce to
people, but I can say it in my diary: I can. Five inventions and two
completed research projects are proof of that. And this discovery... ah, no,
Krivoshein, don't be in a rush to add this to your intellectual laurels.
You're mixed up by this and still can't get it straightened out.
In a word, my heart's desire is what led me into the thick of that
tendency of world systemology where the fundamental operative function is
not the formula, or the algorithm, not even the recipe, but mere chance.
We, with our limited minds, love to make juxtapositions: lyric poets
and physicists, waves and particles, plants and animals, machines and
people.... But in life and in nature these things are not juxtaposed; they
complement each other. Just as logic and chance complement each other in
comprehension and solution finding. You can find much of the unproved, the
capricious, in mathematical and logical constructions and you can find
logical laws at work in random events.
For example, the ideological enemy of random retrieval, Voltampernov,
doctor of technological sciences, never missed a chance to parry my
suggestion (to study modeling of random processes) with the quip: "But that
will be modeling with, so to speak, coffee grounds!" Isn't this the best
illustration of that complementary nature?
And it was hard to argue. There was little achieved in this field, and
many projects ended unsuccessfully, and ideas... ideas didn't have enough
effect. In our department, like in the Wild West, they believed only in bare
facts.
I was thinking of following the example of Valery Ivanov, my friend and
former head of the lab, and to call it quits with the institute and move on
to another city. But-and here it was, the random chance!-the builders did
not complete the new building for perfectly good reasons, and the money
allotted in the institute's budget was not spent for good reason, and Arkady
Arkadievich announced a "contest" to find the best way to spend eighty
thousand rubles. I'm sure that the most virulent defender of determinism
would have to be careful not to make a mistake here.
I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it
was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with
ordinary-meaningful and random-information. Just that. Because when it is
programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. ("A new
breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop's work in three
minutes!"-because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention
the number of months they prepared for that three-minute decision.)
Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than
delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in
any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn't planning on doing it the
elementary way.
To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left
in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research,
was no snap. It's no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute,
Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet.
Actually, he didn't realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to
move into the operative expanses can work wonders.
So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five
thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds
of manipulation, like "Dear man! we'll fulfill the plan and even win a
prize, you'll see!") Thirteen thousand for a TsVM-12 computer. Another nine
thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones,
flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers,
thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials
of the brain using the SES-1 system with four thousand microelectrodes,
pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental "reading"
arrays . . . basically, everything that turns sounds, images, smells, small
pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into
electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents,
laboratory glassware, chemical equipment-in case I ever wanted to employ
chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I'm going to be
completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I
don't have to mention the fact that I didn't use any of the eighty thousand
for personal effects.)
All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I
knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random
signals from the sensors in order to send them to a "reasoning" computer-a
piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several
thousand switching cells. You can't get something like that even by written
order-it doesn't exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers
(diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take
too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed
blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn't have a
blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I
would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my "I don't know what"
and Lena.... Wait. Here I'm not willing to put it all down to chance.
Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal
unit... if you think about something day and night, you'll always come up
with it, find or notice it.
Here was the situation: three weeks left 'til the end of the year;
fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and
I'm riding a bus.
"They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid-state circuits and
then they found out they don't fit!" a woman in a brown fur coat was
exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. "That's disgusting!" "Madness,"
she agreed.
"Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department.
But he ordered them himself!" "Just think of the gall!"
The words "fifty thousand" and "solid-state circuits" had gotten my
attention. "Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?"
The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was
sorry I had interrupted.
" 'Not-ors' and flip-flops!" she answered hotly.
"What parameters?"
"Low-voltage-excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?"
And that's how I met Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer from the
nearby construction design bureau. The following day, engineer Kolomiets
wrote a pass for executive engineer Krivoshein to visit her department.
"Savior! Benefactor!" cried the head of the department, Zhalbek Balbekovich
Pshembakov, when engineer Kolomiets introduced me and explained that I could
buy up the bureau's damned solid-state circuits. But I agreed to benefact
and save Zhalbek Balbekovich only on the following conditions: (a) all
38,000 cells would be mounted on panels in accordance with a rough sketch I
gave him; (b) the cells would be connected by feed bars; (c) each cell would
be wired and; (d) all this would be done by the end of the year.
"You have great production forces here. It won't be difficult for you."
"For the same money? But the cells themselves cost fifty thousand!"
"Yes, but they didn't fit the FTD. Keep that in mind."
"You're a scourge, not a benefactor," said Zhalbek Balbekovich, sadly
waving his hand. "Fill out the order, Elena Ivanovna. We'll send it in from
our department. And I'm putting this whole thing in your hands."
May Allah bless your name, Zhalbek Balbekovich!
To this very day, I think that I won Lena's heart not with my great
qualities, but because-when the cells had been mounted on the panels and the
edges of the microelectrical cube looked like fields of colorful wires-I
answered her tremulous question "And how should they be connected?" with a
devil-may-care:
"However you like! Blue to red-and make sure it's aesthetically
pleasing!"
Women respect the irrational.
And that's how it all happened. Chance does make itself felt. (Oh, now
it's beginning to seem that during the course of my work I've developed a
worshipful attitude toward chance! The fanaticism of a convert.... Before,
to tell the truth, I was a real sluggard, preaching humility and resignation
in the face of "unlucky" events. If you think about it, such feelings always
mask our spiritual laziness and complacency. Now I was beginning to
understand an important aspect of chance, whether in life or science: you
won't conquer it with reason alone. Working with chance demands quick
thinking, initiative, and a readiness to change your plans... but it's just
as stupid to worship it as it is to deride it. Chance is neither enemy nor
friend, neither God nor devil. Whether chance is mastered or lost depends on
the person. And those who believe in luck and fate can go out and buy
lottery rickets!)
"But the name laboratory of Random Research' is too odious," said
Arkady Arkadievich, signing the order to establish an unstructured lab,
directed by engineer Krivoshein, with the concomitant material, fire safety,
and other responsibilities. "You shouldn't give people straight lines. Let's
call it something more restrained, like 'New Systems Laboratory.' And then
we'll see."
That meant that doing my dissertation remained my major problem. Beyond
that, it was "we'll see." I have yet to solve the problem.
If an identification computer, or perceptron, signals "garbage" in
response to a picture of an elephant, to the depiction of a camel, and to
the portrait of a major scientist, this does not necessarily mean that it is
irreparable. It may just be philosophically inclined -K. Prutkov-enzhener,
Thought 30
Naturally, I had hoped, for my spirits, that the work would be
livelier. How could I not dream, when the mastermind of cybernetics, Walter
Ross Ashby, doctor of neurophysiology, kept coming up with ideas, each more
entrancing than the next! Random processes as the source of the development
and ruin of any system, . . . strengthening the thinking capabilities of
humans and machines by distinguishing the valuable thoughts from the
nonsense in random expression,... and finally, noise as the raw material for
extracting information-yes, yes, the "white noise," that troublemaker on
which I lost more than one year and more than one idea trying to drive it
out of circuitry!
In general, if you think about it, the founder of this tendency has to
be considered not Dr. Ashby, but the now-forgotten director of the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow, who (in order to create ominous rumblings in the crowd
scenes of Boris Godunov) first ordered each extra to repeat his home address
and phone number. But Ashby has posited solving the reverse problem. We take
noise-the surf, the hiss of coal dust in a mike, anything-and plug it into a
machine. From the noise chaos we extract the largest "splashes." This gives
us a pattern of impulses. And impulse patterns are binary numbers. And
binary figures can be changed into decimal ones. And decimals are numbers:
for example, the numbers assigned to words in a dictionary for machine
translation. And a collection of words is a sentence. Of course, for now,
the sentences are varied: false, real, abracadabra-informational raw
material. But the next cascade will have two streams of information-the kind
that is intelligible to people, and this raw material. Then operations of
comparison, coincidence, and noncoincidence-and everything nonsensical is
filtered out, as is the banal. Then original new thoughts, discoveries and
inventions, the works of unborn poets and writers, philosophical thoughts
from the future appear! A thinking computer!
Of course, the respected doctor did not explain how to perform this
miracle. His idea is embodied only in squares connected by arrows on a piece
of paper. In general, the question of how to do it is not highly esteemed in
academic circles. "If you remove yourself from the difficulties of technical
realization, then in principle you will be able to imagine...." But how can
I remove myself from it?
Well, enough whining! That's why I'm an experimenter, in order to test
ideas. That's why I have a lab. The walls give off the smell of fresh oil
paint. The air conditioner hums. New instruments shine on the equipment
shelves. Vessels and jars with reagents sparkle in the cupboards, and
colorful piles of wires and soldering irons, their points still red and
uncovered with scale, wait for me. Apparatus, neatly wrapped in plastic, sit
on the counters-and their pointers aren't bent yet and their scales aren't
dusty yet. Dictionaries, textbooks, reference books, and monographs are
arranged on the bookshelves. And in the middle of the room, glistening in
the January sun, stands the TsVM-12, the automatic digital printer, with
lacy, multicolored wires in the crystal unit. Everything is new, unsullied,
unscratched, and everything exudes the wise, rational beauty developed by
generations of craftsmen and engineers.
How could I not dream? And what if I succeeded? Actually, for myself,
my dreams were much more modest: not of a supercomputer that would be
smarter than man (in general, I'm not crazy about that idea, even though
lama systems technologist), but of a computer that would understand man, the
better to do its work. Then that idea seemed possible to me. Indeed, if a
computer can exhibit definite behavior based on everything that I tell and
show it, and so on, then the problem is solved. That means that it has begun
seeing, hearing, and smelling through its sensors in the purely human sense
of these words, without quotation marks or explanations. And then its
behavior could be adapted for any work or problem-that's why it's a
universal computer.
Yes, then in January, it all seemed possible and simple; the sea was
only knee-high. Oh, the inspirational quality of new equipment! The
fantastic green loops on the screen, the confident hum of the transformers,
the crackling of the relays, the blinking of the lights on the panel, the
precise movements of the arrows and pointers.... It feels as though you're
going to measure everything, conquer it all, do it all, and even an ordinary
microscope inspires the confidence that right now (with a magnification of
four hundred and double polarized light) you will see something that no one
else has ever seen!
Why even talk about it? What researcher hasn't dreamed at the outset of
a project, didn't imagine handling the hardest tasks? What researcher hasn't
experienced that overwhelming impatience when you're rushing-hurry!
hurry!-to finish the boring preparatory work-hurry! hurry!-plot the course
of the experiment, and get on with it?
And then . . . and then the everyday lab worries, the everyday
mistakes, the everyday failures break your dream's spirit. And then you're
ready to settle for anything, just so that the whole thing wasn't a waste.
That's what happened to me.
Writing about failure is like reliving it. So I'll be brief. The plan
was like this: we would plug the 38,000-cell crystal unit into the TsVM-12,
and everything else would go into the crystal unit's input: the mikes, the
smell, moisture and temperature sensors, the tesometric feelers, the
photomatrices with a focusing probe, and Monomakh's Crown, to compute the
brain's biowaves. The source of external information was me, that is,
something moving, noisy, changing shape and its coordinates in space, having
temperature and nervous potential. You could hear me, see me, feel me, take
my temperature and blood pressure, analyze my breath, even climb into my
soul and thoughts-go right ahead! The signals from the sensors would have to
feed the crystal unit, stimulating various cells in it; the crystal unit
would form and "pack" the signals into logical combinations for the TsVM-12;
the computer would deal with them as though they were usual problems, and
produce something meaningful. In order to make it easier for the computer, I
programmed all the number-words from A to Z in the computer translation
dictionary into its memory bank.
And . . . nothing. The selsyn motors, whining gently, moved the feeler
and lenses when I moved around the room. The control oscilloscopes showed a
daisy chain of impulses, which jumped from the crystal unit to the computer.
The current flowed. The lights blinked. But during the first month the
digital printer didn't stir once to make a single mark on the punched tape.
I punctured the crystal unit with all the sensors. I read poems. I
sang. I gestured. I ran and I jumped in front of the lenses. I stripped and
dressed. I let the feelers touch me (brr! those cold feelers!). I put on
Monomakh's Crown and-O God!-tried to influence it. I was ready for any magic
formula.
But the TsVM-12 could not put out abracadabra; it wasn't made that way.
If the problem has a solution, it solves it; if it doesn't, it stops.
Judging by the panel lights, something was going on, but every five or six
minutes the "stop" signal went on, and I had to press the reset button. And
it would begin all over again.
Finally, I started thinking about it. The computer had to be performing
arithmetical and logical operations with the impulses from the crystal unit.
Otherwise, what else could it be doing? That meant that even after these
operations the information was still so raw and contradictory that the
computer could not bring the logical ends together. So it would stop! That
meant that one cycle in the computer wasn't enough. That meant-and here, as
usual in these cases, I was embarrassed for not having thought of it
sooner-that meant that I had to arrange for feedback between the computer
(from the units where the impulses still were) and the crystal unit! Then
the raw material would be inputted into the clever cube, transformed there
one more time, and then fed into the computer, and so on, until perfect
clarity reigned.
I perked up. Now we were cooking! I can condense the story about how
150 logic cells and dozens of matrices burned out because the TsVM and
crystal unit were out of sync (smoke, acrid smells, transistors flaming like
bullets in an oven, and me-instead of cutting off the voltage on the panel,
I ran for the fire extinguisher on the wall!), and how I got new cells,
soldered the transition circuits, and coordinated the cycles of all the
units-just the usual difficulties of technical realization. But the
important thing was I got the project off the ground.
On February 151 finally heard the long-awaited clatter: the machine
printed out a string of numbers on the punched tape. Before deciphering it,
I circled the table on which the piece of tape lay, smoked and smiled
vaguely. The computer had begun behaving. There it was, the computer's first
sentence: "Memory 107 bits."
It wasn't what I was expecting. That's why I didn't realize right away
that the computer "wanted" (I can't write a word like that without quotes)
to increase its memory bank.
Actually, it was all very logical. It was receiving complex information
that had to be stored somewhere, but the banks were already filled. Increase
the memory banks! A commonplace task in building computers.
If it weren't for Alter Abramovich's respect for me, the computer's
request would have gone unheeded. But he gave me three cubes of magnetic
memory and two of ferroelectric memory. And everything proceeded smoothly: a
few days later the TsVM-12 repeated its demand, and then again and again....
The computer developed serious demands.
What was I feeling then? Satisfaction. Finally something was happening!
I tried the results out on my dissertation-to-be. I was a little put off by
the fact that the computer was working only for itself.
Then the computer began building itself! Actually, that was logical
too; complex information had to be processed by units more complex than the
standard ones of the TsVM-12.
My work load increased. The printer printed out codes and numbers of
logic cells, and announced where and how they should be added. At first the
computer was satisfied with standard cells. I mounted them on auxiliary
panels.
(I'm only beginning to realize it now, but that was precisely the
moment, if you look at it academically, that I made a grave methodological
error in my work. I should have stopped and figured out just what circuits
and logic my complex was building for itself: the sensors, crystal unit and
TsVM-12 with an increased memory. And then, only when I had it figured out,
move on. And when you think about it, a computer building itself without
being programmed to do so-what a terrific dissertation topic! If I had done
it right, I could have gotten a doctorate right there.
But curiosity took over. The complex was obviously straining to
develop. But why? To understand man? It didn't look like it. The computer
seemed quite satisfied that I understood it and diligently carried out my
commands. People make machines for their own aims. But what kind of aims
could a machine have? Or maybe it wasn't an aim, but a kind of innate
accumulation instinct, which is found in all systems of a certain
complexity, be they earthworms or electrical machines? And what limits would
the complex reach?
It was then that I let loose the reins-and I still don't know whether
that was good or bad....)
In mid-March the computer, which had evidently learned from Monomakh's
Crown about the latest developments in electronics, began asking for
cryosars and cryotrons, runnel transistors, film circuits, micromatrices....
I had no time for analysis; I was rushing all over the institute and the
whole city, wheeling and dealing, lying and cajoling, trying to get my hands
on all this chic stuff.
And it was all for nothing. A month later the computer "got bored" with
electronics and "took up" chemistry.
Actually, this shouldn't have been unexpected either: the computer had
chosen the best way to build itself. After all, chemistry is nature's way.
Nature had neither soldering irons nor cranes, nor welders, nor motors, not
even shovels-it merely combined chemicals, heated and cooled them, lit them,
boiled them... and that's how every living thing on earth came about.
That was the point, that everything the computer did was consecutive
and logical! Even its desires for me to put on Monomakh's Crown-and that was
the most frequent request-were transparent.
Rather than process raw information from photo, sound, smell, and other
sensors, it was much easier to use information already processed by me. In
science, many do that.
But, my God, what reagents the computer demanded: from distilled water
to sodium trimethyldyphtorparaamintetrachlorphenylsulfate and from DNA and
RNA to a specific brand of gasoline! And the convoluted technological
circuits I had to get!
The lab was changing into a medieval alchemist's den before my very
eyes; it was filled with bottles, two-necked flasks, autoclaves, and stills.
I connected them with hoses, glass tubing, and wires. My supply of reagents
and glass was depleted in a week and I had to requisition more and more.
The noble, soothing electrical smells, rosin and heated insulation,
were replaced with the swampy miasmas of acids, ammonia, vinegar, and God
knows what else. I wandered lost in these chemical jungles. The stills and
hoses bubbled, gurgled, and sighed. The mixtures in the flasks and bottles
fermented and changed color; they precipitated, dissolved, and regenerated
metallic pulsating clumps and pieces of shimmering gray threads. I poured
and sprinkled according to the computer's directions and understood nothing.
Then, the computer suddenly asked for four more automatic printers. I
was happy: so the computer was interested in something other than chemistry!
I worked at it, got the stuff, connected it... and off it went!
(Probably, this was the point at which I created Ashby's "power
information retrieval" or something like it. Who knows! That was when I
became hopelessly confused.)
Now the lab sounded like a typing pool. The machines were printing out
numbers. Paper ribbon with columns of numbers poured out of the machines
like manna from heaven. I rolled up the tapes, picked out the words
separated by spaces, translated them, and made sentences.
The "true" phrases were very strange and enigmatic. For example: "....
twenty-six kopeks, like from Berdichev." That was one of the first. Was that
a fact, a thought? Or a hint? How about this: "An onion like a steel
wound...." It resembles Mayakovsky's "A street like an open wound." But what
does it mean? Is it a pathetic imitation? Or maybe a poetic discovery that
contemporary poets haven't reached yet?
I deciphered another tape: "The tenderness of souls, taken in Taylor's
series expansion, in the limits of zero to infinity comes down to a
biharmonic function." Well put, no?
And all of it was like that: either nonsensical excerpts or something
"schizophrenic." I was going to take some of the tapes to the
mathlinguists-maybe they could figure it out-but I changed my mind, fearing
a scandal. Meaningful information came only from the first printer: "Add
such and such reagent to flasks 1,3, and 7. Lower the voltage by five volts
in electrodes 34-123." And so on. The computer remembered "to feed itself,"
and therefore it hadn't "gone mad." What was going on?
The most painful part was knowing that there was nothing I could do. I
had had inexplicable things happen in other experiments, but in those, at
least, I could always backtrack and repeat the experiment. If the bad effect
disappeared, all the better; if not, we could analyze it. But here, there
was nothing that could be replayed, nothing that could be turned back. I
even dreamed of wavy, snakelike tapes in scaly numeral skins, and tried to
figure out what the computer was trying to say.
I didn't even know where to hide the rolls of tape. In our institute we
use the tape two ways: the ones with answers to new questions are turned in
to the archives, and the rest are taken home to be used as toilet paper-very
practical. I had enough rolls for every bathroom in Academic Town.
And when one fine day in April (after a sleepless night in the lab
fulfilling every caprice of the computer: pouring, sprinkling, regulating)
printer Number 3 gave me the following sentence: "A streptocidal striptease
with trembling streptoccoci,..." I knew that there was no point in
continuing.
I took all the rolls out onto the lawn, ruffled them up (I might have
been muttering: "Streptocide, huh? Berdichev? Tenderness of the soul?
Onions?...'' I don't remember) and set fire to them. I sat by the bonfire,
keeping warm, had a cigarette and understood that the experiment was a
failure. And not because nothing had happened, but because I had gotten a
mess. Once for a lark Valery Ivanov and I welded from all the materials we
had on hand a "metallosemiconducting potpourri" in a vacuum oven. We got a
breathtakingly colored ingot; we broke it down for analysis. Each crumb of
the ingot showed all the effects of solid body-from tunnel to transistor-and
they were all unsteady, unstable, and unreproducible. We threw the potpourri
in the garbage.
And this was the same thing. The point of scientific solutions is to
find what is necessary in the mass of qualities and of effects in an
element, in matter, or in a system, and to throw out the chaff. And it
hadn't worked here. The computer had not learned to understand my
information. I headed to the lab to turn off the current.
And in the hallway my eye fell on a tank-a beautiful vessel made of
transparent teflon, 2 x 1.5 x 1.2 meters; I had acquired it back in December
with the idea of using the teflon for other things, but I hadn't needed it.
And the tank gave me a final and completely mad idea. I put all the printers
in the hall and put the tank in their place. I brought all the wires from
the computer, the ends of the piping, tubing, and hoses, poured out the
remains of the reagents, covered the smelly mess with water and turned to
the computer with the following speech:
"Enough numbers! You can not express the world in binary numbers,
understand? And even if it were possible, what point is there to it? Try it
another way: in images, in something tangible, damn you!"
I locked the lab and left with a firm determination to get some rest. I
hadn't been able to sleep for the entire past week.
Those were a pleasant ten days-calm and soothing. I slept late, charged
my batteries, took showers. Lena and I took the motorcycle outside town,
went to the movies, took long walks, kissed. "Well, how are our solid-state
circuits doing?" she would ask. "They haven't gone soft yet?" I would answer
in kind and change the subject. "I have nothing to do with any circuits, or
computers, or experiments!" I would remind myself. "I don't want to be
hauled away from the lab one day in a very cheery mood wearing a jacket with
inordinately long sleeves."
But something was bothering me. I had run off, abandoned the project.
What was going on in there? And what had happened? (I was already thinking
of the experiment in the past tense.) It looked as though, through random
information, I had started some kind of synthesis in the complex. But what
kind of crummy synthesis was it? Synthesis of what?
The waiter wrapped the bottle in a towel and opened it. The room was
filled with a roar and smoke, and unshaven cheeks and a green turban rose to
the ceiling.
"What's this?"
"It's a genie!"
"But 1 ordered champagne! Let me have the complaint book."
-A contemporary fairy tale
A man was walking toward me on the paved path. I could see the green
trees and white columns of the old institute building behind him. I was
headed for the accounting office. Everything was normal in the grounds. The
man had a slightly rolling gait, swinging his arms, and he didn't quite
limp, but stepped more carefully with his right foot than with his left. I
noticed that particularly. The wind made his raincoat flap and ruffled his
red hair.
My first thought: "Where have I seen this guy?"
The closer we got to each other, the more I saw of him: his sloping
forehead with a widow's peak and steep ridges over the eyes, flat cheeks
with a reddish, week-old stubble, haughtily pursed lips, and bored,
squinting eyes. No, we had definitely met before. It was impossible to
forget an obnoxious face like that. And that jaw-my God!-it should be worn
only in the closet.
My second thought: "Should I say hello or walk by indifferently?"
And then everything around me no longer existed. I tripped on the flat
pavement and stood stock still. The person coming toward me was me.
My third thought (edited): "What the...."
The man stopped in front of me.
"Hello."
"H-h-hello...." A thought sprang up from the chaos that ruled in my
brain. "Hey, are you from the film studio?"
"The film studio? I recognize my independence!" My double smiled. "No,
silly schoolgirl.... Val, where's Victor. What happened to him? Listen," she
asked, her eyes growing wide, "is it true that he's a spy?"
"Victor? What Victor?"
"Are you joking? Victor Kravets, your assistant and nephew twice
removed."
"Nephew, lab assistant...." Krivoshein was momentarily confused. "So
that's it!"
Lena threw up her hands.
"Val, what's the matter with you? You can tell me. What happened in the
lab?"
"Forgive me, Lena, I just got confused. Of course, old Peter, I mean
Victor Kravets, my trusty assistant and nephew ... a very nice guy...." The
woman still regarded him wide-eyed. "Don't be surprised, Lena, this is just
a momentary amnesia, that always happens after... after an electric shock.
It'll pass, it's not serious. So you say the rumor's begun that he's a spy?
Ah, that Academy of Sciences!"
"Then it's true that there was a catastrophe in the lab? Why, why do
you keep everything from me? You could have been-no! I don't want to think
about it!"
"Stop, please God, stop!" Krivoshein said irritably, sitting down.
"Could have, couldn't have, did, wasn't.... You see, everything is fine. (I
wish it were, he thought.) I can't tell you anything until I've figured it
all out myself." He moved into an attack. "And what's your problem? So,
there's one Krivoshein more or less in the world-big deal! You're young,
beautiful, childless-you'll find someone else, someone better than an aging
codger like me. Take Peter, I mean, Victor Kravets: he's better for you?"
"Again?" she smiled, came up behind his chair, and put his head on her
bosom. "Why do you keep harping on Victor? I don't need him. I don't care
how good-looking he is; he's not you, understand? That's it. And the others
aren't you either. Now I know for sure."
"Hm?" Krivoshein untangled himself.
"What, 'hm'? You're jealous, silly. I didn't sit at home every night
like a nun. I went out. I was courted, even seriously by some. And still,
they were all wrong!" Her voice caressed him. "They're not like you-and
that's it! I came back to you anyway."
Krivoshein felt the warmth of her body with the back of his neck, felt
her soft hands on his eyes and experienced an incomparable bliss. "I could
sit like this forever. I've just come back from work, and nothing has
happened . . . and I'm tired and she's here . . . but something did happen!
Something very serious happened, and I'm sitting here stealing her
caresses!"
He got up.
"All right, Lena. You'll excuse me, but I'm not going to walk you home.
I'll just sit a while or go to sleep. I don't feel very well after all
that."
"I'll stay?"
It was half question, half statement. For a second Krivoshein was
overwhelmed with wild jealousy. "I'll stay?" she used to say and he would
agree. Or maybe he suggested it himself: "Stay tonight, Lena." And she
stayed.
"No, Lena, you go home." He laughed bitterly.
"That means you're still mad, right?" She looked at him and got mad.
"You're a fool, Val, a real jerk! The hell with you!" And she turned for the
door.
Krivoshein stood in the middle of the room, listening: the click of the
lock, Lena's heels on the stairs, the downstairs door slamming, quick light
steps on the pavement. He ran to the balcony to call to her-and the evening
breeze sobered him up. "So, I see her, and fall back in just like that! I
wonder what she said to him? All right, the hell with last year's romances!"
He went back inside. "I have to find out what happened here. Wait! He must
have a diary! Of course!"
Krivoshein pulled open all the drawers in the desk, tossing out
magazines, folders, quickly glancing through notebooks. No, that's not it.
On the bottom of the last drawer he found a cassette, a quarter filled, and
for a minute he forgot about his search: he got the cassette player from the
shelf, dusted it off, put in the cassette, and turned it on playback.
"With the rights of the discoverers," a hoarse voice began, after some
hissing, carelessly slurring the endings of words, "we are taking it upon
ourselves to research and exploit the discovery to be called-"
"The artificial biological synthesis of information," another voice
(though remarkably like the first) added. "It's not particularly euphonious,
but it's accurate."
"Fine. The artificial biological synthesis of information. We
understand that this discovery touches upon man's life like no other and is
capable of becoming the greatest threat or the greatest boon for mankind. We
swear to do everything in our power to use this discovery for the good of
humanity."
"We swear that until we have researched all the potentials of this
discovery-"
"And until it is clear to us how to use it with absolute reliability
for the good of humanity-" "Not to turn it over into anyone else's hands-"
"And not to publish anything about it."
Krivoshein stood with his eyes closed. He was transported to that May
night when they made that vow.
"We vow not to give away our discovery for our well-being, or fame, or
immortality until we are sure that it cannot be used to harm people. We will
destroy our work rather than permit that."
"We swear!" The two voices spoke in unison. The tape ended.
"We were hotheads then. So, the diary must be nearby." Krivoshein dove
into the desk once more, rummaged about, and a second later held a notebook
with a yellow cardboard cover, as thick and heavy as a book. There was
nothing written on the cover, but Krivoshein was certain that he had found
what he was after: a year ago, when he got to Moscow, he had bought himself
the exact same notebook in a yellow cover to keep his own diary.
He sat down at the desk, moved the lamp closer, lit a cigarette, and
opened the notebook.
The relativity of knowledge is a great thing. The statement "two plus
two equals thirteen" is relatively closer to the truth than "two plus two
equals forty-one." You could even say that the move to the former from the
latter represents an expression of creative maturity, scholarly courage, and
unheard-of scientific progress-if you didn't know that two plus two equals
four.
We know that in arithmetic, but it's too soon to rejoice. For example,
in physics, two plus two equals less than four because of a defect in mass.
And in such fine sciences as sociology or ethics, not even two plus two, but
even one plus one can be either a future family or a conspiracy to rob a
bank.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 5
May 22. Today I saw him off at the train. In the station restaurant,
the customers stared at two grown twins. I felt uncomfortable. He was happy.
"Remember, fifteen years ago, I-no, I guess it was you-left for the
exams at the physics-technological institute? It was all the same: a streak
of alienation, freedom, uncertainty...."
I remembered. Yes, it was the same. The same waiter with an expression
of chronic dissatisfaction with life served tenth-graders who had escaped
into life. Then we thought that everything was ahead of us; and so it was.
And now there is quite a bit behind us: happy things, and gray things, and
things that make it scary to look back, and yet it still seems that the best
and most interesting is ahead.
Then we drank the cheapest port. Now the waiter brought us fine cognac.
We each had a glass.
It was noisy and crowded in the restaurant. People were eating and
drinking in a rush.
"Look," my double pointed out, "a mother feeding twins. Greetings,
colleagues! Look at their eyes. How do you think they'll turn out? For now
their mother is taking care of them, and even so they managed to smear
porridge all over their faces in the same way. But in a few years another
bustling mother will take over-Life. One, say, will grab a chicken by the
tail and pull out all the feathers. The first in a collection of
unrepeatable impressions, since there will be no feathers left for the other
to pull. But the other will get lost in a store with great weeping and
wailing-another personal, unique experience. And a year later his mother
will let him have it for the jam that his brother gobbled up. Again
differences: one will sense injustice while the other is getting away
without punishment. Oh, mama, watch it. If things go on like that, one of
them will grow up to be a timid loser, and the other a sly fellow who gets
away with everything. You'll cry then, mama. You and I are like those
twins."
"Well, at least an unfair spanking won't knock us off the track. We're
at the wrong age."
"I'll drink to that!"
They announced the train. We went out to the platform. He went on
talking.
"You know what's interesting? What happens to that old saw about people
being born with a destiny? Let's say that it was intended at your birth for
you to move through space and time at a certain rate, to advance at work,
etc. And suddenly-abracadabra!-there are two Krivosheins! And they lead
separate lives in separate cities. Now what happens to the divine plan? Or
did God write it in two variants? And what if we turn into ten? And what if
we don't want to, and don't?" We both made believe that something ordinary
was happening. "Friends, check to see that you haven't kept the departing
passengers' tickets by mistake!" I hadn't. The train took him to Moscow.
We agreed to write to each other when necessary (I'll bet that he won't
feel that necessity very soon!) and to meet next July. We'll spend this year
approaching the problem from two angles; he'll take biology, and I'll take
systemology. We'll see....
When the train left I realized that I would miss him. I guess because
this was the first time that I had felt as comfortable with another person
as I do with ... with myself. There's no other way of putting it. Even
between Lena and me there is always something left unsaid, misunderstood,
strictly personal. But with him... but even with him, we each developed our
own secrets over a month of living together. Interesting, that bustling
mother life!
I was high on cognac, and coming back from the station I stared at
people and at life. Women with concerned, anxious faces entering stores.
Guys riding on motorcycles with girls on the back seat. Lines forming by the
newspaper kiosks, waiting for the evening papers. Human faces, how different
they all are, how understandable and mysterious! I can't explain how it
happens, but I seem to know about a lot of them. The corners of the mouth,
harsh or fine wrinkles, the bearing of the head, and the eyes-especially the
eyes!-they are all signs of preverbal information. Probably from the days
when we were apes.
Just recently I did not notice such things. I did not notice, for
instance, that people waiting in line were ugly. The banality and
meaninglessness of such an occupation, the worry that they will run out,
that someone will sneak in ahead of them, leaves an ugly imprint on the
face. And drunks are ugly, and brawlers are ugly.
But take a look at a young girl, laughing at a joke made by the boy she
loves. Or at a mother, nursing a child. At a master craftsman doing fine
work. At a good man thinking about something. They are beautiful, despite
pimples, wrinkles, and lines.
I could never appreciate beauty in animals. As far as I'm concerned
only man is beautiful-and then only when he is human.
A toddler stared at me as though I were a miracle, tripped and fell,
insulted by earth's pull. His mother, naturally, added to his pain. The
little guy suffered for nothing. What kind of marvel am I? Just a man
getting fat, with a round back, and a common face.
But maybe the little fellow was right: I'm really a miracle? And every
person is a miracle?
What do we know about people? What do I know about myself? In the
problem called life, people are a given that does not have to be proved. And
everyone who uses that given comes up with his own theory. Take my double,
for instance. He left and that was both unexpected and logical.
But wait! If I'm going to get into this, I should start at the
beginning.
It's funny to remember. Actually, I began with the simplest of
intentions. To do my dissertation.
But creating something secondhand and compilatory (sort of like the
topic recommended to me by my former chief professor Voltampernov, "Several
Peculiarities in Projecting Diode Memory Systems") was boring and repulsive.
I was human after all. I wanted an unsolved problem, to get into its soul
and to investigate nature with the help of reason, machines, and apparatus.
And to discover something that no one had ever known. Or to invent something
that no one else ever had thought of. And to be asked questions at the
defense that would be fun to answer. And then to be told by friends, "Well,
you really let them have it! Terrific!"
All the more because I can do that. It's not something you announce to
people, but I can say it in my diary: I can. Five inventions and two
completed research projects are proof of that. And this discovery... ah, no,
Krivoshein, don't be in a rush to add this to your intellectual laurels.
You're mixed up by this and still can't get it straightened out.
In a word, my heart's desire is what led me into the thick of that
tendency of world systemology where the fundamental operative function is
not the formula, or the algorithm, not even the recipe, but mere chance.
We, with our limited minds, love to make juxtapositions: lyric poets
and physicists, waves and particles, plants and animals, machines and
people.... But in life and in nature these things are not juxtaposed; they
complement each other. Just as logic and chance complement each other in
comprehension and solution finding. You can find much of the unproved, the
capricious, in mathematical and logical constructions and you can find
logical laws at work in random events.
For example, the ideological enemy of random retrieval, Voltampernov,
doctor of technological sciences, never missed a chance to parry my
suggestion (to study modeling of random processes) with the quip: "But that
will be modeling with, so to speak, coffee grounds!" Isn't this the best
illustration of that complementary nature?
And it was hard to argue. There was little achieved in this field, and
many projects ended unsuccessfully, and ideas... ideas didn't have enough
effect. In our department, like in the Wild West, they believed only in bare
facts.
I was thinking of following the example of Valery Ivanov, my friend and
former head of the lab, and to call it quits with the institute and move on
to another city. But-and here it was, the random chance!-the builders did
not complete the new building for perfectly good reasons, and the money
allotted in the institute's budget was not spent for good reason, and Arkady
Arkadievich announced a "contest" to find the best way to spend eighty
thousand rubles. I'm sure that the most virulent defender of determinism
would have to be careful not to make a mistake here.
I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it
was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with
ordinary-meaningful and random-information. Just that. Because when it is
programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. ("A new
breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop's work in three
minutes!"-because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention
the number of months they prepared for that three-minute decision.)
Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than
delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in
any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn't planning on doing it the
elementary way.
To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left
in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research,
was no snap. It's no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute,
Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet.
Actually, he didn't realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to
move into the operative expanses can work wonders.
So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five
thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds
of manipulation, like "Dear man! we'll fulfill the plan and even win a
prize, you'll see!") Thirteen thousand for a TsVM-12 computer. Another nine
thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones,
flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers,
thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials
of the brain using the SES-1 system with four thousand microelectrodes,
pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental "reading"
arrays . . . basically, everything that turns sounds, images, smells, small
pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into
electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents,
laboratory glassware, chemical equipment-in case I ever wanted to employ
chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I'm going to be
completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I
don't have to mention the fact that I didn't use any of the eighty thousand
for personal effects.)
All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I
knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random
signals from the sensors in order to send them to a "reasoning" computer-a
piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several
thousand switching cells. You can't get something like that even by written
order-it doesn't exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers
(diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take
too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed
blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn't have a
blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I
would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my "I don't know what"
and Lena.... Wait. Here I'm not willing to put it all down to chance.
Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal
unit... if you think about something day and night, you'll always come up
with it, find or notice it.
Here was the situation: three weeks left 'til the end of the year;
fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and
I'm riding a bus.
"They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid-state circuits and
then they found out they don't fit!" a woman in a brown fur coat was
exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. "That's disgusting!" "Madness,"
she agreed.
"Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department.
But he ordered them himself!" "Just think of the gall!"
The words "fifty thousand" and "solid-state circuits" had gotten my
attention. "Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?"
The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was
sorry I had interrupted.
" 'Not-ors' and flip-flops!" she answered hotly.
"What parameters?"
"Low-voltage-excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?"
And that's how I met Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer from the
nearby construction design bureau. The following day, engineer Kolomiets
wrote a pass for executive engineer Krivoshein to visit her department.
"Savior! Benefactor!" cried the head of the department, Zhalbek Balbekovich
Pshembakov, when engineer Kolomiets introduced me and explained that I could
buy up the bureau's damned solid-state circuits. But I agreed to benefact
and save Zhalbek Balbekovich only on the following conditions: (a) all
38,000 cells would be mounted on panels in accordance with a rough sketch I
gave him; (b) the cells would be connected by feed bars; (c) each cell would
be wired and; (d) all this would be done by the end of the year.
"You have great production forces here. It won't be difficult for you."
"For the same money? But the cells themselves cost fifty thousand!"
"Yes, but they didn't fit the FTD. Keep that in mind."
"You're a scourge, not a benefactor," said Zhalbek Balbekovich, sadly
waving his hand. "Fill out the order, Elena Ivanovna. We'll send it in from
our department. And I'm putting this whole thing in your hands."
May Allah bless your name, Zhalbek Balbekovich!
To this very day, I think that I won Lena's heart not with my great
qualities, but because-when the cells had been mounted on the panels and the
edges of the microelectrical cube looked like fields of colorful wires-I
answered her tremulous question "And how should they be connected?" with a
devil-may-care:
"However you like! Blue to red-and make sure it's aesthetically
pleasing!"
Women respect the irrational.
And that's how it all happened. Chance does make itself felt. (Oh, now
it's beginning to seem that during the course of my work I've developed a
worshipful attitude toward chance! The fanaticism of a convert.... Before,
to tell the truth, I was a real sluggard, preaching humility and resignation
in the face of "unlucky" events. If you think about it, such feelings always
mask our spiritual laziness and complacency. Now I was beginning to
understand an important aspect of chance, whether in life or science: you
won't conquer it with reason alone. Working with chance demands quick
thinking, initiative, and a readiness to change your plans... but it's just
as stupid to worship it as it is to deride it. Chance is neither enemy nor
friend, neither God nor devil. Whether chance is mastered or lost depends on
the person. And those who believe in luck and fate can go out and buy
lottery rickets!)
"But the name laboratory of Random Research' is too odious," said
Arkady Arkadievich, signing the order to establish an unstructured lab,
directed by engineer Krivoshein, with the concomitant material, fire safety,
and other responsibilities. "You shouldn't give people straight lines. Let's
call it something more restrained, like 'New Systems Laboratory.' And then
we'll see."
That meant that doing my dissertation remained my major problem. Beyond
that, it was "we'll see." I have yet to solve the problem.
If an identification computer, or perceptron, signals "garbage" in
response to a picture of an elephant, to the depiction of a camel, and to
the portrait of a major scientist, this does not necessarily mean that it is
irreparable. It may just be philosophically inclined -K. Prutkov-enzhener,
Thought 30
Naturally, I had hoped, for my spirits, that the work would be
livelier. How could I not dream, when the mastermind of cybernetics, Walter
Ross Ashby, doctor of neurophysiology, kept coming up with ideas, each more
entrancing than the next! Random processes as the source of the development
and ruin of any system, . . . strengthening the thinking capabilities of
humans and machines by distinguishing the valuable thoughts from the
nonsense in random expression,... and finally, noise as the raw material for
extracting information-yes, yes, the "white noise," that troublemaker on
which I lost more than one year and more than one idea trying to drive it
out of circuitry!
In general, if you think about it, the founder of this tendency has to
be considered not Dr. Ashby, but the now-forgotten director of the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow, who (in order to create ominous rumblings in the crowd
scenes of Boris Godunov) first ordered each extra to repeat his home address
and phone number. But Ashby has posited solving the reverse problem. We take
noise-the surf, the hiss of coal dust in a mike, anything-and plug it into a
machine. From the noise chaos we extract the largest "splashes." This gives
us a pattern of impulses. And impulse patterns are binary numbers. And
binary figures can be changed into decimal ones. And decimals are numbers:
for example, the numbers assigned to words in a dictionary for machine
translation. And a collection of words is a sentence. Of course, for now,
the sentences are varied: false, real, abracadabra-informational raw
material. But the next cascade will have two streams of information-the kind
that is intelligible to people, and this raw material. Then operations of
comparison, coincidence, and noncoincidence-and everything nonsensical is
filtered out, as is the banal. Then original new thoughts, discoveries and
inventions, the works of unborn poets and writers, philosophical thoughts
from the future appear! A thinking computer!
Of course, the respected doctor did not explain how to perform this
miracle. His idea is embodied only in squares connected by arrows on a piece
of paper. In general, the question of how to do it is not highly esteemed in
academic circles. "If you remove yourself from the difficulties of technical
realization, then in principle you will be able to imagine...." But how can
I remove myself from it?
Well, enough whining! That's why I'm an experimenter, in order to test
ideas. That's why I have a lab. The walls give off the smell of fresh oil
paint. The air conditioner hums. New instruments shine on the equipment
shelves. Vessels and jars with reagents sparkle in the cupboards, and
colorful piles of wires and soldering irons, their points still red and
uncovered with scale, wait for me. Apparatus, neatly wrapped in plastic, sit
on the counters-and their pointers aren't bent yet and their scales aren't
dusty yet. Dictionaries, textbooks, reference books, and monographs are
arranged on the bookshelves. And in the middle of the room, glistening in
the January sun, stands the TsVM-12, the automatic digital printer, with
lacy, multicolored wires in the crystal unit. Everything is new, unsullied,
unscratched, and everything exudes the wise, rational beauty developed by
generations of craftsmen and engineers.
How could I not dream? And what if I succeeded? Actually, for myself,
my dreams were much more modest: not of a supercomputer that would be
smarter than man (in general, I'm not crazy about that idea, even though
lama systems technologist), but of a computer that would understand man, the
better to do its work. Then that idea seemed possible to me. Indeed, if a
computer can exhibit definite behavior based on everything that I tell and
show it, and so on, then the problem is solved. That means that it has begun
seeing, hearing, and smelling through its sensors in the purely human sense
of these words, without quotation marks or explanations. And then its
behavior could be adapted for any work or problem-that's why it's a
universal computer.
Yes, then in January, it all seemed possible and simple; the sea was
only knee-high. Oh, the inspirational quality of new equipment! The
fantastic green loops on the screen, the confident hum of the transformers,
the crackling of the relays, the blinking of the lights on the panel, the
precise movements of the arrows and pointers.... It feels as though you're
going to measure everything, conquer it all, do it all, and even an ordinary
microscope inspires the confidence that right now (with a magnification of
four hundred and double polarized light) you will see something that no one
else has ever seen!
Why even talk about it? What researcher hasn't dreamed at the outset of
a project, didn't imagine handling the hardest tasks? What researcher hasn't
experienced that overwhelming impatience when you're rushing-hurry!
hurry!-to finish the boring preparatory work-hurry! hurry!-plot the course
of the experiment, and get on with it?
And then . . . and then the everyday lab worries, the everyday
mistakes, the everyday failures break your dream's spirit. And then you're
ready to settle for anything, just so that the whole thing wasn't a waste.
That's what happened to me.
Writing about failure is like reliving it. So I'll be brief. The plan
was like this: we would plug the 38,000-cell crystal unit into the TsVM-12,
and everything else would go into the crystal unit's input: the mikes, the
smell, moisture and temperature sensors, the tesometric feelers, the
photomatrices with a focusing probe, and Monomakh's Crown, to compute the
brain's biowaves. The source of external information was me, that is,
something moving, noisy, changing shape and its coordinates in space, having
temperature and nervous potential. You could hear me, see me, feel me, take
my temperature and blood pressure, analyze my breath, even climb into my
soul and thoughts-go right ahead! The signals from the sensors would have to
feed the crystal unit, stimulating various cells in it; the crystal unit
would form and "pack" the signals into logical combinations for the TsVM-12;
the computer would deal with them as though they were usual problems, and
produce something meaningful. In order to make it easier for the computer, I
programmed all the number-words from A to Z in the computer translation
dictionary into its memory bank.
And . . . nothing. The selsyn motors, whining gently, moved the feeler
and lenses when I moved around the room. The control oscilloscopes showed a
daisy chain of impulses, which jumped from the crystal unit to the computer.
The current flowed. The lights blinked. But during the first month the
digital printer didn't stir once to make a single mark on the punched tape.
I punctured the crystal unit with all the sensors. I read poems. I
sang. I gestured. I ran and I jumped in front of the lenses. I stripped and
dressed. I let the feelers touch me (brr! those cold feelers!). I put on
Monomakh's Crown and-O God!-tried to influence it. I was ready for any magic
formula.
But the TsVM-12 could not put out abracadabra; it wasn't made that way.
If the problem has a solution, it solves it; if it doesn't, it stops.
Judging by the panel lights, something was going on, but every five or six
minutes the "stop" signal went on, and I had to press the reset button. And
it would begin all over again.
Finally, I started thinking about it. The computer had to be performing
arithmetical and logical operations with the impulses from the crystal unit.
Otherwise, what else could it be doing? That meant that even after these
operations the information was still so raw and contradictory that the
computer could not bring the logical ends together. So it would stop! That
meant that one cycle in the computer wasn't enough. That meant-and here, as
usual in these cases, I was embarrassed for not having thought of it
sooner-that meant that I had to arrange for feedback between the computer
(from the units where the impulses still were) and the crystal unit! Then
the raw material would be inputted into the clever cube, transformed there
one more time, and then fed into the computer, and so on, until perfect
clarity reigned.
I perked up. Now we were cooking! I can condense the story about how
150 logic cells and dozens of matrices burned out because the TsVM and
crystal unit were out of sync (smoke, acrid smells, transistors flaming like
bullets in an oven, and me-instead of cutting off the voltage on the panel,
I ran for the fire extinguisher on the wall!), and how I got new cells,
soldered the transition circuits, and coordinated the cycles of all the
units-just the usual difficulties of technical realization. But the
important thing was I got the project off the ground.
On February 151 finally heard the long-awaited clatter: the machine
printed out a string of numbers on the punched tape. Before deciphering it,
I circled the table on which the piece of tape lay, smoked and smiled
vaguely. The computer had begun behaving. There it was, the computer's first
sentence: "Memory 107 bits."
It wasn't what I was expecting. That's why I didn't realize right away
that the computer "wanted" (I can't write a word like that without quotes)
to increase its memory bank.
Actually, it was all very logical. It was receiving complex information
that had to be stored somewhere, but the banks were already filled. Increase
the memory banks! A commonplace task in building computers.
If it weren't for Alter Abramovich's respect for me, the computer's
request would have gone unheeded. But he gave me three cubes of magnetic
memory and two of ferroelectric memory. And everything proceeded smoothly: a
few days later the TsVM-12 repeated its demand, and then again and again....
The computer developed serious demands.
What was I feeling then? Satisfaction. Finally something was happening!
I tried the results out on my dissertation-to-be. I was a little put off by
the fact that the computer was working only for itself.
Then the computer began building itself! Actually, that was logical
too; complex information had to be processed by units more complex than the
standard ones of the TsVM-12.
My work load increased. The printer printed out codes and numbers of
logic cells, and announced where and how they should be added. At first the
computer was satisfied with standard cells. I mounted them on auxiliary
panels.
(I'm only beginning to realize it now, but that was precisely the
moment, if you look at it academically, that I made a grave methodological
error in my work. I should have stopped and figured out just what circuits
and logic my complex was building for itself: the sensors, crystal unit and
TsVM-12 with an increased memory. And then, only when I had it figured out,
move on. And when you think about it, a computer building itself without
being programmed to do so-what a terrific dissertation topic! If I had done
it right, I could have gotten a doctorate right there.
But curiosity took over. The complex was obviously straining to
develop. But why? To understand man? It didn't look like it. The computer
seemed quite satisfied that I understood it and diligently carried out my
commands. People make machines for their own aims. But what kind of aims
could a machine have? Or maybe it wasn't an aim, but a kind of innate
accumulation instinct, which is found in all systems of a certain
complexity, be they earthworms or electrical machines? And what limits would
the complex reach?
It was then that I let loose the reins-and I still don't know whether
that was good or bad....)
In mid-March the computer, which had evidently learned from Monomakh's
Crown about the latest developments in electronics, began asking for
cryosars and cryotrons, runnel transistors, film circuits, micromatrices....
I had no time for analysis; I was rushing all over the institute and the
whole city, wheeling and dealing, lying and cajoling, trying to get my hands
on all this chic stuff.
And it was all for nothing. A month later the computer "got bored" with
electronics and "took up" chemistry.
Actually, this shouldn't have been unexpected either: the computer had
chosen the best way to build itself. After all, chemistry is nature's way.
Nature had neither soldering irons nor cranes, nor welders, nor motors, not
even shovels-it merely combined chemicals, heated and cooled them, lit them,
boiled them... and that's how every living thing on earth came about.
That was the point, that everything the computer did was consecutive
and logical! Even its desires for me to put on Monomakh's Crown-and that was
the most frequent request-were transparent.
Rather than process raw information from photo, sound, smell, and other
sensors, it was much easier to use information already processed by me. In
science, many do that.
But, my God, what reagents the computer demanded: from distilled water
to sodium trimethyldyphtorparaamintetrachlorphenylsulfate and from DNA and
RNA to a specific brand of gasoline! And the convoluted technological
circuits I had to get!
The lab was changing into a medieval alchemist's den before my very
eyes; it was filled with bottles, two-necked flasks, autoclaves, and stills.
I connected them with hoses, glass tubing, and wires. My supply of reagents
and glass was depleted in a week and I had to requisition more and more.
The noble, soothing electrical smells, rosin and heated insulation,
were replaced with the swampy miasmas of acids, ammonia, vinegar, and God
knows what else. I wandered lost in these chemical jungles. The stills and
hoses bubbled, gurgled, and sighed. The mixtures in the flasks and bottles
fermented and changed color; they precipitated, dissolved, and regenerated
metallic pulsating clumps and pieces of shimmering gray threads. I poured
and sprinkled according to the computer's directions and understood nothing.
Then, the computer suddenly asked for four more automatic printers. I
was happy: so the computer was interested in something other than chemistry!
I worked at it, got the stuff, connected it... and off it went!
(Probably, this was the point at which I created Ashby's "power
information retrieval" or something like it. Who knows! That was when I
became hopelessly confused.)
Now the lab sounded like a typing pool. The machines were printing out
numbers. Paper ribbon with columns of numbers poured out of the machines
like manna from heaven. I rolled up the tapes, picked out the words
separated by spaces, translated them, and made sentences.
The "true" phrases were very strange and enigmatic. For example: "....
twenty-six kopeks, like from Berdichev." That was one of the first. Was that
a fact, a thought? Or a hint? How about this: "An onion like a steel
wound...." It resembles Mayakovsky's "A street like an open wound." But what
does it mean? Is it a pathetic imitation? Or maybe a poetic discovery that
contemporary poets haven't reached yet?
I deciphered another tape: "The tenderness of souls, taken in Taylor's
series expansion, in the limits of zero to infinity comes down to a
biharmonic function." Well put, no?
And all of it was like that: either nonsensical excerpts or something
"schizophrenic." I was going to take some of the tapes to the
mathlinguists-maybe they could figure it out-but I changed my mind, fearing
a scandal. Meaningful information came only from the first printer: "Add
such and such reagent to flasks 1,3, and 7. Lower the voltage by five volts
in electrodes 34-123." And so on. The computer remembered "to feed itself,"
and therefore it hadn't "gone mad." What was going on?
The most painful part was knowing that there was nothing I could do. I
had had inexplicable things happen in other experiments, but in those, at
least, I could always backtrack and repeat the experiment. If the bad effect
disappeared, all the better; if not, we could analyze it. But here, there
was nothing that could be replayed, nothing that could be turned back. I
even dreamed of wavy, snakelike tapes in scaly numeral skins, and tried to
figure out what the computer was trying to say.
I didn't even know where to hide the rolls of tape. In our institute we
use the tape two ways: the ones with answers to new questions are turned in
to the archives, and the rest are taken home to be used as toilet paper-very
practical. I had enough rolls for every bathroom in Academic Town.
And when one fine day in April (after a sleepless night in the lab
fulfilling every caprice of the computer: pouring, sprinkling, regulating)
printer Number 3 gave me the following sentence: "A streptocidal striptease
with trembling streptoccoci,..." I knew that there was no point in
continuing.
I took all the rolls out onto the lawn, ruffled them up (I might have
been muttering: "Streptocide, huh? Berdichev? Tenderness of the soul?
Onions?...'' I don't remember) and set fire to them. I sat by the bonfire,
keeping warm, had a cigarette and understood that the experiment was a
failure. And not because nothing had happened, but because I had gotten a
mess. Once for a lark Valery Ivanov and I welded from all the materials we
had on hand a "metallosemiconducting potpourri" in a vacuum oven. We got a
breathtakingly colored ingot; we broke it down for analysis. Each crumb of
the ingot showed all the effects of solid body-from tunnel to transistor-and
they were all unsteady, unstable, and unreproducible. We threw the potpourri
in the garbage.
And this was the same thing. The point of scientific solutions is to
find what is necessary in the mass of qualities and of effects in an
element, in matter, or in a system, and to throw out the chaff. And it
hadn't worked here. The computer had not learned to understand my
information. I headed to the lab to turn off the current.
And in the hallway my eye fell on a tank-a beautiful vessel made of
transparent teflon, 2 x 1.5 x 1.2 meters; I had acquired it back in December
with the idea of using the teflon for other things, but I hadn't needed it.
And the tank gave me a final and completely mad idea. I put all the printers
in the hall and put the tank in their place. I brought all the wires from
the computer, the ends of the piping, tubing, and hoses, poured out the
remains of the reagents, covered the smelly mess with water and turned to
the computer with the following speech:
"Enough numbers! You can not express the world in binary numbers,
understand? And even if it were possible, what point is there to it? Try it
another way: in images, in something tangible, damn you!"
I locked the lab and left with a firm determination to get some rest. I
hadn't been able to sleep for the entire past week.
Those were a pleasant ten days-calm and soothing. I slept late, charged
my batteries, took showers. Lena and I took the motorcycle outside town,
went to the movies, took long walks, kissed. "Well, how are our solid-state
circuits doing?" she would ask. "They haven't gone soft yet?" I would answer
in kind and change the subject. "I have nothing to do with any circuits, or
computers, or experiments!" I would remind myself. "I don't want to be
hauled away from the lab one day in a very cheery mood wearing a jacket with
inordinately long sleeves."
But something was bothering me. I had run off, abandoned the project.
What was going on in there? And what had happened? (I was already thinking
of the experiment in the past tense.) It looked as though, through random
information, I had started some kind of synthesis in the complex. But what
kind of crummy synthesis was it? Synthesis of what?
The waiter wrapped the bottle in a towel and opened it. The room was
filled with a roar and smoke, and unshaven cheeks and a green turban rose to
the ceiling.
"What's this?"
"It's a genie!"
"But 1 ordered champagne! Let me have the complaint book."
-A contemporary fairy tale
A man was walking toward me on the paved path. I could see the green
trees and white columns of the old institute building behind him. I was
headed for the accounting office. Everything was normal in the grounds. The
man had a slightly rolling gait, swinging his arms, and he didn't quite
limp, but stepped more carefully with his right foot than with his left. I
noticed that particularly. The wind made his raincoat flap and ruffled his
red hair.
My first thought: "Where have I seen this guy?"
The closer we got to each other, the more I saw of him: his sloping
forehead with a widow's peak and steep ridges over the eyes, flat cheeks
with a reddish, week-old stubble, haughtily pursed lips, and bored,
squinting eyes. No, we had definitely met before. It was impossible to
forget an obnoxious face like that. And that jaw-my God!-it should be worn
only in the closet.
My second thought: "Should I say hello or walk by indifferently?"
And then everything around me no longer existed. I tripped on the flat
pavement and stood stock still. The person coming toward me was me.
My third thought (edited): "What the...."
The man stopped in front of me.
"Hello."
"H-h-hello...." A thought sprang up from the chaos that ruled in my
brain. "Hey, are you from the film studio?"
"The film studio? I recognize my independence!" My double smiled. "No,