Computer World
To the Editors:
Bravo for "The Computer Society" [Feb. 20]. The rapid advance of technology might be a more frightening phenomenon if man's ability to change and adapt were not what put us in this position in the first place!
Harden H. Wiedemann Geneva
I fail to see how a computer society will enrich the lives of its people. Increased leisure time is already a problem in the U.S. Who would actively, physically participate in a sport or hobby when a computer could do it all for you? Might not life become unbearably boring?
Yvonne Brandon Davis Carbondale, Ill.
When we humans finally abandon the egotistical notion that skin and bones define sentient existence and that evolution is exclusively biological, we will recognize computers for what they are--the highest form of life on earth.
John Swinton University Park, Pa.
Robert Jastrow's Essay, "Toward an Intelligence Beyond Man's," is based on the claim that "in the 1990s ... the reasoning power of computers ... will begin to match that of the human brain." At no research laboratory that I know is there evidence for such a projection. Twenty years ago, computer conversion of spoken words to typed text was "around the corner." Today we are still unable to duplicate this simple human function, let alone reasoning. We cannot say that such things will never happen. We can say, however, that we have no scientific basis for forecasting the merger of human and machine intelligences at any time, let alone in ten or 1,000 years.
Equating the giant strides of computers to the simulation of human intelligence is at best scientifically naive and at worst sensationalistic fuel to the public's suspicions about computers.
Michael L. Dertouzos, Director
Laboratory for Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Mass.
More chilling than the vision of a pushbutton life was your litany of the "benign" influence of new-generation computers. Mindless worship of faster-and-easier is the product of programmed thinking. The computers are proud of you.
Jeff Iseminger Decorah, Iowa
Wrapped in sweaters and quilts against the cold because of a coal strike, I am reading about the computer society under one light bulb. Doesn't it seem ludicrous that scientists are developing machines to take over more of our lives while we in Ohio are regretting how much we are already dependent on electricity and machines for our wellbeing?
Cheryl Hildebrand Ashland, Ohio
Your vision of the Utopian future created by computers is enraging. Amid all the fancy gadgets, you still have the husband carrying out the important business while the wife does the shopping in an otherwise empty day. Some households of the present are doing better than that.
Marsha Zuckerman Pittsburgh
I found a 11,110,100,001,001,000,000-dollar baby in a 101-and 1010-cent store is the translation into binary of I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store.
Edmund West Tacoma
Planet earth is signaling its presence to outer space with I Love Lucy and Tonight? You've gotta be kidding. When outer space sends its answer, we'd better be ready to duck.
(Mrs.) Jean Evans Platteville, Wis.
A Reason to Pay
Just one glimpse of the picture of Richard Grimshaw, the burn victim of a Pinto crash [Feb. 20], was enough to convince me that Ford Motor Co. deserves to be taken to the cleaners. While I realize that we, the consumers, eventually have to pay for this, it would appear to be justified in incidences such as this.
Penelope B. Davit Poolesville, Md.
Terrifying Waxworks
As an art buff and an avid fan of Duane Hanson's terrifying waxworks, I take issue with Robert Hughes' rather patronizing article [Feb. 20]. Hanson's sculptures relate harrowingly to each other, as well as to the crowd of viewers: they are you and me and the guy next door lost in an emptiness that cannot be made safe by platitudes, by science, or even by art reviews. In his unwillingness to see beyond the obvious. Mr. Hughes has eaten the recipe instead of the cake.
Larry Wallingford Chicago
I think Robert Hughes is much too harsh in his criticism of Duane Hanson's waxworks. You say relationships are necessary for tragedy. Doesn't the tragedy of our age consist precisely of alienation and lack of relationships? We try and try to relate, but become more and more disillusioned. His figures are universal human beings betrayed by the plastic age. Isolation. That to me is our tragedy, and Hanson says it finally and awfully.
Mary Cablish Belle, W. Va.
Homosexual Health
So 2,500 psychiatrists are putting homosexuals back on the sick list [Feb. 20]. It seems to me that the good doctors are basing their analyses on their own close encounters of the absurd kind. From those whom they see on their office couches, they "naturally" conclude that the whole homosexual population is pathologically evolved. Do they form their views on the entire heterosexual population from the sampling of troubled "straight" souls they see on their couches? Arthur N. Siegel Culver City, Calif.
That my mental health as a gay person is even open to a popular vote of the A.P.A. tells the public less about my competency than about the sorry state of the psychiatric profession. First they vote that homosexuality is not a disorder. Now, presumably since public opinion may be starting a reactionary shift after Anita Bryant's campaign, they decide it is a "pathological adaptation." It is as if we were in a Roman circus, waiting for a capricious thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the almighty Caesar to determine the fate of our psychological selves.
Life could have certainly handed me a lot worse things than being a lesbian --I could have become a psychiatrist.
Jeanne Flint New York City
The South's Share?
So, according to your story "Playing Poorer than Thou" [Feb. 13]. Northern states are squawking over federal money headed South. Until New Deal assistance, the South had long been a Government stepchild. After a crushing Civil War defeat, tax-ridden Reconstruction punctuated by unfulfilled Northern promises of jobs for freed blacks, discriminatory railroad freight rates, denial of Government pensions for Confederate veterans and widows, it's time the South got her share of Government funds.
Donald N. Edwards Santa Rosa, Calif.
A Lot of Fruit
You don't really believe that West Germany "annually imports 140 million tons of citrus products from Israel," as you said in "Strange Fruits" [Feb. 13]. That would require each of West Germany's 62 million people to eat more than two tons of Israeli fruit per year.
Robert McQueen Reno
West Germany imports around 180,000 tons of citrus fruit from Israel annually.
Human Nature and Litigation
Attorney Paul Ashley's suggestion that most voluntary human relationships could benefit from written contracts [Feb. 13] is another attempt to put the hands of lawyers into the pockets of the people.
Human nature is such that persons will always change their minds, thereby allowing the possibility of litigation, naturally between two good lawyers.
Lucindo Suarez New York City
Crocodiles in Lesotho?
In your article describing Journalist Donald Woods' escape from South Africa [Feb. 13], you say, "He forded a crocodile-infested river."
As a former chief conservation officer in Lesotho, I would like to point out that the Telle River, which Woods forded to get into Lesotho from the Republic of South Africa, flows at an elevation of 5,800 ft. and up. A very negative environment for crocodiles.
The crocodile appears as a symbol on Lesotho's coat of arms but nowhere else in that high and beautiful country.
Thomas P. Helseth Sun City, Ariz.
The British Character
What really irks me is to hear a Briton like Tory Leader Margaret Thatcher [Feb. 20] ask a legal immigrant to go back where he came from, and then talk about how much the "British character" has contributed toward law-and-order in this world. Maybe if the British had stuck to their godforsaken island and let people of other cultures live in peace, the world would be a better place to live in now.
Bakkiam Subbiah, M.D. Iowa City, Iowa
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