The Complete Roderick Read Online Free

you see, I
am
interested – and in fact it was Ben who suggested I might drop over and talk to you some time. You or whoever was here.’
    ‘And tour the lab?’ Fong let the other armchair take his weight. ‘Look, I know it was a disappointment to you, I guess you were expecting more of a, a show.’
    The smile again, and Rogers looked away. ‘Well, can’t say I was very impressed. I mean, all I could see was this skinny kid in a dirty t-shirt, sitting there in this glass box pushing buttons, like –’
    ‘I tried to explain, Dan’s just doing some delicate on-line programming, he –’
    ‘Yeah, well, too bad he couldn’t stop and talk for a minute. I mean just sitting there like a disc jockey or some, like that pope whatsit in the Francis Bacon painting, can’t say that impressed me, no. As for the rest, a lot of computers and screens and things, I could see those anywhere, and what are they supposed to mean to a layman? I expected – I don’t know –’
    ‘You wanted a steel man with eyes lighting up? “Yes Master?”, that kind of robot? Listen, Roderick’s not like that. He’s not, he doesn’t even have a body, not yet, he’s just, he’s a learning system –
where is that goddamned book?
I know I had it … A learning system isn’t a thing, maybe we shouldn’t even call him a robot, he’s more of a, he’s like a
mind.
I guess you could call him an artificial mind.’
    Rogers looked at the ceiling, revealing more pock marks under his chin. Now the smile was an open sneer. ‘I didn’t know you hard-science men played with words like that. The mind: the ghost in the machine, not exactly the stuff of hard science, is it? I mean, am I supposed to tell the committee I came to see the machine and all you could show me was the ghost?’
    ‘Roderick’s no ghost, he’s real enough but he’s, the money ran out before we could build his body and get him ready for – but listen, we’ve got a kind of makeshift body I could show you, something like the Stanford Shakey only it’s still dead, he’s not –’
    ‘What makes you think I’m so goddamned interested in bodies, all of a sudden? Dead machines, dead – I’m not – that’s not what I –’
    ‘And even then when he’s in his body he won’t do much for a while, he’ll be like a helpless baby at first. See that essay I showed you, Roderick didn’t write that, he –’
    ‘What the hell here?’
    ‘No, that was written by a computer using a model of just part of his, part of a learning system. See, we grow it to maturity on its own, each part. That was linguistic analogy, we grew it to – if I could only find that book, I could –’
    ‘Forget about the damned book. I already have a book Ben loaned me, I didn’t come down here to look at dead machinery and borrow a book. I came to find out what makes you tick.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You, Dan Sonnenschein in there in his glass box, all of you. Christ, I’m not a cybernetician, I’m a sociologist. What really interests me is not this
thing,
this so-called
mind,
it’s
your
minds. Your motivation.’
    ‘My motivation?’
    Rogers adjusted his glasses and suddenly looked professorial. ‘You all seem highly motivated to pursue this, ahm, this Frankensteinian goal, shall we say? But just what is the nature of your commitment?’
    ‘What?’
    I want to elicit a hard-edge definition here of your total commitment. Of your motivational
Gestalt,
if that doesn’t sound too pompous. Why do you believe you can succeed where others have failed? Why is it important that you succeed – important to you, that is. What’s your – gut reaction to all this? And why do
you
feel I should get the committee to vote for it?’
    ‘This is silly, my feelings have nothing to do with –’
    ‘So you feel, anyway. You feel you’re only seeking after objective truth here, right? But that too is only a feeling. I’m trying to help you, Lee, but I need something to run with. Not just dead machines, but