In much the same way, in the Middle Ages, there were few books, and it was easy for a man to handle nearly all the information that was in books. As the printing press came into use, man’s brain could no longer handle all recorded information, and the effort to do so was given up. But in 1944, a brain to handle information, equipped with a motor and supporting the man and his reasoning, came into existence—as the sequence-controlled calculator.
In previous chapters we have examined some of the giant mechanical brains that have been finished; we have also considered the design of such machines. Now in this chapter we shall discuss the future significance of machines that think, of motorized information. We shall discuss what we can foresee if we look with imagination into the future.
There are two questions we need to ask: What types of machines that think can we foresee? What types of problems to be solved by these machines can we foresee?
FUTURE TYPES OF MACHINES THAT THINK
The machines that already exist show that some processes of thinking can already be performed very quickly:
- Calculating: adding, subtracting,...
- Reasoning: comparing, selecting,...
- Referring: looking up information in lists,...
We can expect other processes of thinking to come up to high speed through the further development of thinking machines.
Automatic Address Book
Nowadays when we wish to send out announcements of an event, like going to South America for a year, we may copy the addresses of our friends onto the envelopes by hand. In the future, we can see our address book as a spool of magnetic tape. When we wish to send out announcements, we put a stack of blank envelopes into the machine that will read the magnetic tape, and we press a button. Out will come the envelopes addressed.
If we wish to select only those friends of ours whose last names we put down on a list, we can write the list on another magnetic tape, place it also in the machine, and set a few switches. Then the machine will read the names on the list, find their addresses in the address-book tape, and prepare only the envelopes we want. If a friend’s address changes, we can notify the machine. It will find his old address, erase it, and enter the new address.