What is the difference between a human and a machine? We can ask this question now, but in the future will the answer be the same? In the world of Neuromancer, the difference is minuscule because it’s apparent that a machine can do almost everything a human can. An important conversation arises between the Finn and Case when he is in the Metro Holografix, and ultimately an observation that I don’t think can be a coincidence.
When Case questions the Finn, “This is memory, right?” and the Finn explains that he taps it in , sorts it out, and feeds it back in, it seems that the level of control that the artificial intelligence has is incredible. The fact that the AI can manipulate his memory to an extreme detail scares Case because he questions Finn, “I don’t have this good a memory”. The Finn later explains that Case, and many others, do have good memory; they just can’t access it. Weird, because this novel was written in 1984 and research in 2009 has proven this to be somewhat accurate (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/ for those that are interested). However, beyond Gibson’s surprisingly accurate predictions about the future, the question of Case’s human importance still lingers. The Finn claims that he can access Case’s memory, but makes a point that memory is not the same as the mind. Conventional wisdom has it that the difference between a machine and a human is the material they are made out of, and while I agree that this is true, Gibson delves deeper and provides a great paradigm for the difference between human and machine through the barrier that the Finn meets; the fact that he can’t access Case’s mind.
In chapter thirteen I noticed that the police personalities were officially called “Turing Registry Agents”. In 1950, Alan Turing wrote a paper called “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” which basically questions the ability of a machine to think. He developed a famous test called the Turing test, where a human has to differentiate between a human and a machine response. If the human cannot tell the difference, the machine is considered to be intelligent. The fact that Gibson included the reference to Turing, and the way he twists the real world in with his novel while still making it relevant is incredible. The Turing law code bans the construction of AIs, and Alan Turing developed a test for machine intelligence. It just makes sense. What can we learn from this book? It’s all in the details.
