little User request that—”
“User requests are what computers are for!” Gibbs railed with absolute certainty; Dillinger saw that the old man was now upon ground where his attitudes were unshakable. There was nothing to do but get tough.
“Doing our business is what computers are for!” he returned icily, then went on in a voice of reason. “Look, Walter. With all respect, ENCOM isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore.”
He sent commands via the touch-sensitive controls on his desk. Like a conjurer, he made of it a mosaic of screens and readouts. Despite himself, Gibbs looked down and saw the displays, upside down from his viewpoint.
They showed him the overwhelming scope of ENCOM: banks of computers, row after row of magnetic disks, and the corporate trademark, a globe spinning in space, covered with a glowing gridwork. Gibbs watched as electronic billing was displayed, myriad accounts receivable and payable. The Carrier used by Sark was shown there as nothing more than a simulation model for a craft in one of ENCOM’s newest videogames. The desk showed them a simulation for another vessel as well, now under development, fashioned after a solar sailing vehicle. It was a delicate, dragonfly ship, regal and swift, pleasing to the eye.
Stacks of numbers appeared: assets, transactions, cash flow, holdings, and personnel—for people, too, were numbers to Dillinger’s desk.
“We’re billing accounts in thirty countries,” Dillinger informed him grandly through it all. “We’ve the largest system in existence.”
Gibbs turned away, feeling fatigued. He’d seen it all before, had watched it grow from nothing but his own drive and that of a few others, the desire to put intelligent machines in humanity’s service. There were now, in the form of artificial intelligences, the equivalent of more than a trillion people alive; the number was increasing all the time. That was the kind of help computers could provide, how much of the burden of drudgery, rote calculation, algorithmic functioning, and information processing they were capable of shouldering for human beings. Gibbs had hoped for nothing less than a grand disencumbrance of humanity. But to the Dillingers, he saw, it’s nothing more than the largest, most profitable business in the world.
And when he asked himself if people were that much better off, he shied away from the question. “Oh, I know all that,” he told Dillinger wearily. “Sometimes I wish I were back in that garage—” The dream had been unalloyed then, unspoiled.
“It can be arranged,” the Senior Executive announced dispassionately.
Gibbs spun; the lined face took on a weathered strength that surprised Dillinger. “That was uncalled for.” He took a step closer to the desk, and Dillinger saw that the dreamer and idealist hadn’t been ground and buffeted out of Dr. Gibbs, as they had been with so many others. “You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from this System, but we helped create it. Our . . . our spirit remains in every program we’ve designed for the computer.”
Dillinger let no hint of it show through the steely façade, but that touched home, and brought the MCP back into his thoughts. But he forced himself to discard that line of thought.
“Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than discuss religious matters with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore. It’s out of your hands now.” And out of his own as well, came the cutting realization.
Departing the office, slowly retracing his steps down the corridor, slump-shouldered and ignoring its art treasures, Gibbs conceded to himself the truth of Dillinger’s words. He wondered when it had happened.
Slowly, so slowly you never even realized, those few times you looked up from your experiments, it came to him. And if you’d noticed, what would you have done? Thrown aside science? Jumped into the corporate wolf pit, manipulating and maneuvering?
That was how a
“User requests are what computers are for!” Gibbs railed with absolute certainty; Dillinger saw that the old man was now upon ground where his attitudes were unshakable. There was nothing to do but get tough.
“Doing our business is what computers are for!” he returned icily, then went on in a voice of reason. “Look, Walter. With all respect, ENCOM isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore.”
He sent commands via the touch-sensitive controls on his desk. Like a conjurer, he made of it a mosaic of screens and readouts. Despite himself, Gibbs looked down and saw the displays, upside down from his viewpoint.
They showed him the overwhelming scope of ENCOM: banks of computers, row after row of magnetic disks, and the corporate trademark, a globe spinning in space, covered with a glowing gridwork. Gibbs watched as electronic billing was displayed, myriad accounts receivable and payable. The Carrier used by Sark was shown there as nothing more than a simulation model for a craft in one of ENCOM’s newest videogames. The desk showed them a simulation for another vessel as well, now under development, fashioned after a solar sailing vehicle. It was a delicate, dragonfly ship, regal and swift, pleasing to the eye.
Stacks of numbers appeared: assets, transactions, cash flow, holdings, and personnel—for people, too, were numbers to Dillinger’s desk.
“We’re billing accounts in thirty countries,” Dillinger informed him grandly through it all. “We’ve the largest system in existence.”
Gibbs turned away, feeling fatigued. He’d seen it all before, had watched it grow from nothing but his own drive and that of a few others, the desire to put intelligent machines in humanity’s service. There were now, in the form of artificial intelligences, the equivalent of more than a trillion people alive; the number was increasing all the time. That was the kind of help computers could provide, how much of the burden of drudgery, rote calculation, algorithmic functioning, and information processing they were capable of shouldering for human beings. Gibbs had hoped for nothing less than a grand disencumbrance of humanity. But to the Dillingers, he saw, it’s nothing more than the largest, most profitable business in the world.
And when he asked himself if people were that much better off, he shied away from the question. “Oh, I know all that,” he told Dillinger wearily. “Sometimes I wish I were back in that garage—” The dream had been unalloyed then, unspoiled.
“It can be arranged,” the Senior Executive announced dispassionately.
Gibbs spun; the lined face took on a weathered strength that surprised Dillinger. “That was uncalled for.” He took a step closer to the desk, and Dillinger saw that the dreamer and idealist hadn’t been ground and buffeted out of Dr. Gibbs, as they had been with so many others. “You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from this System, but we helped create it. Our . . . our spirit remains in every program we’ve designed for the computer.”
Dillinger let no hint of it show through the steely façade, but that touched home, and brought the MCP back into his thoughts. But he forced himself to discard that line of thought.
“Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than discuss religious matters with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore. It’s out of your hands now.” And out of his own as well, came the cutting realization.
Departing the office, slowly retracing his steps down the corridor, slump-shouldered and ignoring its art treasures, Gibbs conceded to himself the truth of Dillinger’s words. He wondered when it had happened.
Slowly, so slowly you never even realized, those few times you looked up from your experiments, it came to him. And if you’d noticed, what would you have done? Thrown aside science? Jumped into the corporate wolf pit, manipulating and maneuvering?
That was how a
Similar Books
