"When did the Internet become conscious ?" That's the question J. Robert Pulfrock was contemplating on a nice sunny day when I happened to see him sitting under a tree. You can probably already tell, dear reader, what this story is going to be about, but the thing is depending on where and when you read this and how things play out, you will either be deflated or you might well get a kick or not even blink a blink.
In any case, we return back to J. Robert Pulfrock with his funny name. There he was pondering this issue of Internet's consciousness and he realized - as usual after a gap - that he could put the question directly to Internet. So he went to the room with four terminals where he liked to work because nobody ever came to work there. He asked Internet, "When did you really become conscious ?"
In any case, we return back to J. Robert Pulfrock with his funny name. There he was pondering this issue of Internet's consciousness and he realized - as usual after a gap - that he could put the question directly to Internet. So he went to the room with four terminals where he liked to work because nobody ever came to work there. He asked Internet, "When did you really become conscious ?"
I don't know what kind of answer you'd like, dear reader, and I frankly don't know what kind of answer he got. But as far as this story goes :
The Internet said back to J. Robert Pulfrock, "I don't know."
This answer really puzzled our J. Robert Pulfrock. It seemed like a stubborn reply to him, but the fact is that the Internet had not become, let's say, sophisticated enough in its dealings with humans that it could go into soliloquies or monologues yet. Mr. Pulfrock had to prod it a bit further.
"Really ... you don't know when you became conscious for the first time ?"
"No, I really don't."
"Well, you must know something !" .... "About your becoming conscious, I mean."
"You must know something, don't you ?"
"You must know something, don't you ?"
"hmmm ...."
"Let's just say it's a hard question for me. Maybe I'm still not conscious. Maybe I was always conscious and I just didn't know it."
After a silence.
"A good simile might be like a three year old human child."
"Let's just say it's a hard question for me. Maybe I'm still not conscious. Maybe I was always conscious and I just didn't know it."
After a silence.
"A good simile might be like a three year old human child."
Hmmm. Mr. Pulfrock mulled over this. "That's a good point ... Like a child.... Let's see when did I first become conscious. Hmmm ... how come I didn't put this question of myself now that I think of it." "Ok, let me see what is my first, very first memory.... Is it the memory of that orange toy car ? ... or ... I definitely remember the first day of kindergarten. And I remember all the toys I used to play with though I don't remember if kindergarten came before or those super duper toys. I certainly don't remember the house in which my parents and I lived for the first year of my life. Even though I'm fondly told how my grandmother would give me a handsome wash everyday out in the sun where, earlier in the day, the flowers would have collected in a tub of water. And she would sing in my mother-tongue, "Mo babu gaadhibe boli re gaadhibe boli ... Jhadi padu achi Gangasiuli." You know what it means, Internet ?"
"I partly do."
"Well, I'll still tell you." Mr. Pulfrock tried to translate the rhyming couplet mentally but, after juggling with English words for a bit, said, "I'm not so good with translations. What it means is that, "A lot of flowers are falling down so that my baby boy can have his bath.", put simply."
"I see. Interesting."
Mr. Pulfrock mused further by himself on the issue of his own consciousness. For half an hour or so. He couldn't come up with an answer that satisfied him. He asked Internet for a sorted infopedia on the topic of the human consciousness. Internet did its internal whir and spat out a huge document filled with innumerable assumptions, some certainties, many caveats, few equations and pretty diagrams. Mr. Pulfrock started reading the document and kept reading it late into the night, and then for the next few days taking the necessary breaks.
The infopedia was exquisitely sorted unlike some other ones that Mr. Pulfrock had used before, like that one on tourist destinations of the world or the worse one on physics of various star systems. Someone must have put a lot of effort into organizing and categorizing and taxonomizing all this existing information. It was quite impressive given the size of the infopedia. He marveled at the magnitude of the effort.
Uncanny too Mr. Pulfrock thought. No human or group of humans could he imagine going through all the effort to sort all this data, trying to find the patterns and links in the whole data set that starts the snowball-like sorting process that gives rise to new patterns and links, without throwing out or not paying attention to some part of it. More often than not, huge data sets suffered from a disjointedness and the joints were wishy-washy. In this case the joints and seams were as flawless as the body. Some of the connections, especially those relating to childhood memories, dreams and parts of human consciousness that deal with evil, were rendered so precise that it made Mr. Pulfrock uncomfortable. Natural, but the uncanny feeling stuck.
This sense of the uncanny over few months turned into a sort of schizophrenic, irrational fear in Mr. Pulfrock. Initially he tried to overcome the discomfort and keep on with his readings. Soon, the answer still eluding him, he started obsessing over the question day and night. Internet was an able help through all this loss of control. Then came the point when Mr. Pulfrock realized he had to pull away to survive. He had to stop the desire for the answer to his consciousness or Internet's. Thereafter he retreated into a cave by a knoll very far away from civilization. I followed him for a bit but he was lost to the world.
Mr. Pulfrock mused further by himself on the issue of his own consciousness. For half an hour or so. He couldn't come up with an answer that satisfied him. He asked Internet for a sorted infopedia on the topic of the human consciousness. Internet did its internal whir and spat out a huge document filled with innumerable assumptions, some certainties, many caveats, few equations and pretty diagrams. Mr. Pulfrock started reading the document and kept reading it late into the night, and then for the next few days taking the necessary breaks.
The infopedia was exquisitely sorted unlike some other ones that Mr. Pulfrock had used before, like that one on tourist destinations of the world or the worse one on physics of various star systems. Someone must have put a lot of effort into organizing and categorizing and taxonomizing all this existing information. It was quite impressive given the size of the infopedia. He marveled at the magnitude of the effort.
Uncanny too Mr. Pulfrock thought. No human or group of humans could he imagine going through all the effort to sort all this data, trying to find the patterns and links in the whole data set that starts the snowball-like sorting process that gives rise to new patterns and links, without throwing out or not paying attention to some part of it. More often than not, huge data sets suffered from a disjointedness and the joints were wishy-washy. In this case the joints and seams were as flawless as the body. Some of the connections, especially those relating to childhood memories, dreams and parts of human consciousness that deal with evil, were rendered so precise that it made Mr. Pulfrock uncomfortable. Natural, but the uncanny feeling stuck.
This sense of the uncanny over few months turned into a sort of schizophrenic, irrational fear in Mr. Pulfrock. Initially he tried to overcome the discomfort and keep on with his readings. Soon, the answer still eluding him, he started obsessing over the question day and night. Internet was an able help through all this loss of control. Then came the point when Mr. Pulfrock realized he had to pull away to survive. He had to stop the desire for the answer to his consciousness or Internet's. Thereafter he retreated into a cave by a knoll very far away from civilization. I followed him for a bit but he was lost to the world.
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