Page 27 - Three Adventures

Deflator Mouse

Pursuant DOD directive DM001.34e, acknowledgement of
this policy declaration must be submitted in writing to the
director within forty-eight hours of receipt.

Cyborg Systems and the Mechanical Expert

Computing devices began as adjuncts to human memory;
externalizing the representation of information was a
significant step in the development of civilization,
comparable to the rule of law. In both cases, judgements of
persons in authority had an objective basis for the first time,
open to inspection by anyone with the appropriate
arithmetical or literary skills: accountants and lawyers were
born. Authority itself, notwithstanding legalist auditing,
remained until recently a completely personal prerogative.
Statutes and budgets may be overridden, morally or
otherwise, by those in power; indeed, the ambivalently-
regarded charismatic leader of the modern world is most
characteristically powerful in his rejection of institutionalized
rules and procedures. At the furthest extreme is the
Orwellian vision of a dictator rewriting history and changing
the meaning of words to suit his own aims; the charisma of
such a leader may be yet another fiction, but his power is
absolute.

More than a generation has passed since the publication of
1984, and events have taken a slightly different, though no
less ominous, turn. The capricious master is about to
become abject slave, his authority seized by machines. As
theoreticians grope toward the realization of mechanical
intelligence, existing computer technology has already
provided us with “expert systems.” Analysis of the gestalt of
human authorities in law, medicine, and a variety of financial
disciplines has yielded algorithms mimicking the basic
thought processes of the “expert.” These computer systems
link a finite series of micro-decisions, each with a ponderable
value in the next higher level of diagnosis, to arrive at a final

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