Review. Society of the mind.
Review. Society of the mind. Laura Aldrich, Harvard professor of psychology, receives an intriguing invitation to perform some consultancy for the richest industrial genius on Earth. The fee, a cool million. She can't refuse can she ? Would you ?
Even without knowing what the job entails she accepts and is whisked off to a remote island where strange things are happening.
There she finds that the consultancy involves pshycoanalysing a computer that thinks it is intelligent.
The core of this story revolves around the relationship between the computer, (Is it a person ?), the industrialist, Joseph Gray, (Possibly in need of psychoanalysis himself), and Laura, who gets more confused by the page.
Surrounding these main characters are a number of bit players, including autonomous robots of varying shapes and sizes, (Are they people ?), and the real humans who have helped Gray create this technological dream. All fleshed out to a surprising degree given this books technological bias.
The book is a forum for discussion of the increasingly grey areas of human, computer, and robotic intelligence. Perhaps some humor on the authors part in naming the instigator of this confusuion 'Gray'.
As a discussion piece it works extremely well. I don't claim to be a computer genius myself, but Harrys postulates seem coherent and well thought out, and almost inevitable. If hardware ever does become truly able to think like 'wetware', then this is how it may happen.
Harry manages to get his point across without 'data dumping', and keeps each new revelation to a minimum. After a while you catch on to the game and can predict what the next logical step in the evolution of machines would be. It is then very satisfying when that which you have just reasoned to be the logical next development, enters stage right.
This is all very well but what moves this book towards greatness, is the interplay between the characters and the way they all help each other to grow in what turns out to be an exceedingly and increasingly volatile atmosphere.
Here are elements of Frankenstein, elements of Dr Moreaus island, New scientist even compared it with Jurassic park but I believe that is to do Harry a disservice.
The book was heading for a score of 90 plus as I neared the end. I became concerned as the pages started to run out, and then the story was over.
I am still not entirely sure what is missing. I just know that something is.
I would not be at all surprised if the author himself is dissapointed with the ending. Perhaps he was prompted by his publisher to go into print before he was ready.
This is a crying shame as the first 9/10ths of the book are a tour de force, that should shift Harry to the shelves of the bestsellers.
Having excelled himself once, I hope he can do it again without falling at the final hurdle. There is definitely room here for a sequel, and Harry has left more than one hook to hang it on.
