Module 10: A Logic Named Joe

This week’s assignment consists of reading “A Logic Named Joe”, an article that was published back in the year 1946.  In this publication, a lot of foretelling about computers is told; some being conceivable and other foretelling being inconceivable.  I found the reading very interesting, being that the document was published just as computers were invented and became a reality.  I can imagine what people thought back then when they read this publication.  Some of them might have thought, “There will be a time when see all of these things come to pass.”  Another might have thought, “This publication is ridiculous, we will never see this.”  Whatever the response was, today we are seeing some of these prophecies come to pass.

                In the publication, one computer is built slightly different, but not so different that can be detected.  The alteration makes the computer super smart and answers anybody’s question correctly, even to the point of exceeding human intelligence.  The computer is owned by a family that does not know that their computer has a defect.  The computers are interconnected, meaning that there is a network available for all to use.  This interconnectedness had not happened in 1946, nor did it happen soon after.  It wasn’t until the early 1960’s when organizations were coming together to collaborate and develop a network to communicate between computers.  So, for this document that explains the interconnectedness of computers means that the people’s minds and thoughts were way ahead of their times. 

                When the users would log on to their computers, they would be told that the computer can answer any question of their desire.  This I think is similar to modern day search engines.  When users go to Google’s website to enter their questions into the search bar, if the question is simple, even mathematical, it can be answered on the result page.  If a direct answer is not found, then many websites that contain the information wanted is presented and most of the time the results are presented by the most relevant.  The difference between the 1946 publication and today’s technology is that the computer in the publication was smarter than human intelligence, and that if no answer existed for the user, then the computer would search until it found an answer.  The computer would be able to compute and find an answer to an unknown answer that nobody could find.

                One thing that is happening today, and is quite scary if you ask me, is being able to find anyone and retrieve any information of that person.  In the publication, a woman was able to get any information of her neighbor, husband, friend, acquaintance, or stranger.  Today, some websites are available to anyone who pays a small fee.  One that is worth mentioning is spokeo.com.  Spokeo is a website to find people; however, it is not just a people finder website.  Spokeo has the ability to search for people and their address, phone, gender, age, email, what relationship they are in, their income, house value, ethnicity, education, occupation, political orientation, religion, hobbies, family tree, what social networks they belong to, and property details.  The property details inform the searching individual of how long the person has been at that location, lot and home size, how many rooms and baths, how many floors, if a garage is on the property, how many people live at that location (along with how many adults and how many children), what heating and cooling is on the property, if there is a swimming pool, the architecture, construction type, and material.  To me, this is way too much information for anyone to have, especially when we live in a day when terrorists desire to harm the innocent.  Fortunately, Spokeo provides a way to eliminate yourself from others searching your personal information.   One can log on to the website and enter in their information for Spokeo not to display result of the information.  In the publication, it is described that anybody can locate and find information on anyone else, this was a prophecy that is now in our world today.

                Of course, some things in the publication just cannot come to pass.  One of these prophecies consisted of the computer that was made just the same as the others, but had special non-detectable qualities that made it run in an above human intelligence way.  Another is that the computer could tell others how to do anything and that the information was only specific to that person.  For example, in one of my other classes, we configure Linux servers to operate specific services.  Everyone in the class is given the same assignment; however, each person has different issues that arise.  So, I could not simply ask a computer how to correct my issue, because my issue could be completely different than the person next to me.

                I found the reading informative and entertaining, because of the date the article was written.  It definitely foretold many things that we do today.