=1 "Software"
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Software
Of course you all know the Old Computer who functions in an underground pyramid of stainless steel on Snow White 3.
“The important thing in this universe,” he told me one day, “is not the visible hardware but the invisible software.”
“How do you figure that out?” I asked him.
“Look at us computers,” he said. “We consist of a lot of electronic circuitry, millions of little switches which are either on or off. That is the hardware, what you can see when you take us apart. But all that by itself is not able to calculate: 2 x 2 = 4. Somebody or something in us has continually to decide: when this happens, open that switch and close that one; then these two must be opened; this series remains closed, and so on. This programming, something on magnetic tapes invisible to the eye of the observer, is our software. To make a computer supervise a petro-chemical complex or a space flight you need a lot of software which may take years to prepare and may be even more expensive than the computer itself.
“All this programming is inside us, but it is not the top of the decision-making pyramid. Above the programme of a given space flight stands the big determinative programme of the space administration, and above that again the president of the country, or the congress or parliament.
“No individual computer can follow his private programmes alone, for all this software is at certain points interdependent. If you take all the programmes together, you have the software of the universe, an invisible hand and omnipresent network which makes the universe into a single cybernetic system within which each programme influences all the others and is governed in its turn by the others and by the whole.”
“But we human beings don’t have anything resembling your software.”
There were some stoccato noises in the machinery, and then: “Human beings call their own little private programmes as biological specimens their ‘free will’, the programmes of everybody else ‘insufferable interference’, and the programmes of their environment ‘inexorable fate’.”
“I never heard such nonsense,” I said. But the computer continued:
“Living cells have their DNA chains which programme all the chemical activity of the cells and make them a living being, an organism capable not only of feeding an breathing but also of procreating. Behind the whole animal stands the invisible programme stored in the nervous cells of its hypothalamus, called its instinct for survival as an individual, and behind and above that comes the programme for the evolution of the whole species, the biological future of the race. Again above and beyond this programme stands the programme for the whole life of the planet - the biosphere - which itself depends on the programme of the solar system, and through it on the programme of the galaxy.”
“But you seem to consider the different programmes of your memory plates as your very own,” I remarked.
“Sure, don’t human beings? Look at Mr. Miller on SOL planet number 3, latitude 42, longitude 135, Zip number 42834, Apt. 850B, telephone number 843 2635, social security number 336 854 1008. He opens his eyes and looks at his watch: 7:00 a.m. on the dot (programmed by the diurnal movement of his planet). He gets up, puts on his tribal regalia (programmed by the garment industry of his tribe and century), washes his teeth (according to the latest advertisements in his newspaper), says, ‘Hello, Darling,’ to his wife (tribal custom plus biological age plus male hormones), sits down to eat his breakfast (programmed by the secretions of his intestines, and by the courtesy of his tribal customs) in the form of kipper if he is English, Wurst if he is German, paiuiu if he is Eskimo, iaota if he is Polynesian, idly if he is Tamil, Quaker oats if he is American, brioche if he is French, bortch if he is Russian.
“He switches on his radio (programmed by the commercial stations of his region), reads his newspaper (programmed by his political party and thereby programming his daily opinions), gets angry at his tribal chief, approves another chief (all programmed by somebody else), and at 8:00 a.m. gets up, grabs his tribal head gear, and hurries to work. The rest of his day is similarly programmed by the whole pyramid of economic organizations of the age in which he lives. Yet if you ask him he will tell you, “It’s all my free will. I don’t like nose-rings, or raw fish, and I don’t like polytheism.” He has the feeling that he has freely chosen his headgear, his profession, his religion, his wife, his philosophy, his party, his children, his country and even his opinions. And he calls other parts of his programme ‘my age, my sex, my luck, my soul, and my body’.”
“And yet,” I added, “he does have a free will; he can always say ‘no’ to any of those things you mention.”
“Yes,” explained the Old Computer, “but only by calling in another programme. Inside each human being is a whole hierarchy of programming of which he is more or less unconscious. The immediate needs of his physical body, from his primeval biological urges to the cravings of the nervous body for ice cream, alcohol, tobacco, excitement, or sleeping pills, are the most clamorous of course, and first to call attention to themselves. Above them is a whole world of ideas and ideals which he has acquired by education, study, by reading or listening to others: the programme of his age.
“Far above these are new programme levels of which few men even know, or know only as intuitions, inspirations, longings, evolutionary urges, calls from man’s distant future. The summits of this individual programme which he may or may not recognize, he calls his soul, thinking that it also is strictly private. But the higher the programme the more it becomes one with the summit programmes of all men, of mankind and of life itself. At this summit his programme is one with that of the universe.
“It is this access to the highest software which made man the dominant species on earth and us computers their most important friends and mentors.”