True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (42 page)

Now, finally, let's return to the question of how much a simulated life inside a world inside a machine could be like our ordinary, real life, “out here”? My answer, as you know by now, is that it could be very much the same—since we, ourselves, as we've seen, already exist as processes imprisoned in machines inside machines. Our mental worlds are already filled with wondrous, magical symbol-signs, which add to everything we “see” a meaning and significance.

All educated people already know how different is our mental world from the “real world” our scientists know. For, consider the table in your dining room; your conscious mind sees it as having a familiar function, form, and purpose: a table is “a thing to put things on.” However, our science tells us that this is only in the mind; all that's “really there” is a society of countless molecules. The table seems to hold its shape only because some of those molecules are constrained to vibrate near one another, because of certain properties of the force fields which keep them from pursuing independent paths. Similarly, when you hear a spoken word, your mind attributes sense and meaning to that sound—whereas, in physics, the word is merely a fluctuating pressure on your ear, caused by the collisions of myriads of molecules of air—that is, of particles whose distances, this time are less constrained.

And so—let's face it now, once and for all: each one of us already has experienced what it is like to be simulated by a computer!

“Ridiculous,” most people say, at first: “I certainly don't
feel
like a machine!”

But what makes us so sure of that? How could one claim to know how something feels, until one has experienced it? Consider that either you are a machine or you're not. Then, if, as you say, you aren't a machine, you are scarcely in any position of authority to say how it feels to be a machine.

“Very well, but, surely then, if I were a machine, then at least I would be in a position to know that!”

No. That is only an innocently grandiose presumption, which amounts to claiming that, “I think, therefore I know how thinking works.” But as we've seen, there are so many levels of machinery between our conscious thoughts and how they're made that saying such a thing is as absurd as to say, “I drive, therefore I know how engines work!”

“Still, even if the brain is a kind of computer, you must admit that its scale is unimaginably large. A human brain contains many billions of brain cells—and, probably, each cell is extremely complicated by itself. Then, each cell is interlinked in complicated ways to thousands or millions of other cells. You can use the word “machine” for that, but surely no one could ever build anything of that magnitude!”

I am entirely sympathetic with the spirit of this objection. When one is compared to a machine, one feels belittled, as though one is being regarded as trivial. And, indeed, such a comparison is truly insulting—so long as the name “machine” still carries the same meaning it had in times gone by. For thousands of years, we have used such words to arouse images of pulleys, levers, locomotives, typewriters, and other simple sorts of things; similarly, in modern times, the word “computer” has evoked thoughts about adding and subtracting digits, and storing them unchanged in tiny so-called “memories.” However those words no longer serve our new purposes, to describe machines that think like us; for such uses, those old terms have become false names for what we want to say. Just as “house” may stand for either more, or nothing more, than wood and stone, our minds may be described as nothing more, and, yet far more, than just machines.

As to the question of scale itself, those objections are almost wholly out-of-date. They made sense in 1950, before any computer could store even a mere million bits. They still made sense in 1960, when a million bits cost a million dollars. But, today, that same amount of memory costs but a hundred dollars (and our governments have even made the dollars smaller, too)—and there already exist computers with billions of bits.

The only thing missing is most of the knowledge we'll need to make such machines intelligent. Indeed, as you might guess from all this, the focus of research in artificial intelligence should be to find good ways, as Vinge's fantasy suggests, to connect structures with functions through the use of symbols. When, if ever, will that get done? Never say “Never.”

Books by Vernor Vinge

Tatja Grimm's World

The Witling

The Peace War

Marooned in Realtime

A Fire upon the Deep

A Deepness in the Sky

Rainbows End

The Children of the Sky

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
(short fiction)

True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
(fiction, essays)

 

Available from Tor Books

About the Editor

James Frenkel has been a publishing professional as an editor, agent and packager for more than four decades. In the 1980s he was the publisher of Bluejay Books, and he has edited books for Tom Doherty Associates for more than thirty years. Before that, he edited for Dell Books. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

The publisher would like to acknowledge the following copyright and publication history:

“A Time of Transition / The Human Connection” by Danny Hillis. Copyright © 1997 by Danny Hillis. First published in
Communicatins of he ACM,
February 1997 / Volume 40, Number 2. Reprinted by arrangement with the author.

“True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy” by Timothy C. May. Copyright © 2001 by Timothy C. May. Reprinted by arrangement with the author.

“Eventful History: Version 1.x” by John M. Ford. Copyright © 2001 by John M. Ford. Published by arrangement with the author.

“Satan's Computer: Why Security Products Fail Us” by Bruce Schneier. Copyright © 1999 by Bruce Schneier. First published in
Computerworld,
November 1999. Reprinted by arrangement with the author.

“How is the NII Like a Prison?” by Alan Wexelblat. Copyright © 1995 by Alan Wexelblat. First appeared on the World Wide Web. Published by arrangement with the author.

“Intelligent Software” by Pattie Maes. Copyright © 1997 by Pattie Maes. First published in
Scientific American,
September 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Right to Read” (A special note) by Richard Stallman. Copyrighr © 2014 by Richard Stallman. Published by arrangement with the author.

“Cryptography and the Politics of One's True Name” by Leonard N. Foner. Copyright © 2001 by Leaonard N. Foner. Pubilshed by arrangement with the author.

“The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat” by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer. Copyright ©1992 by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer. First published in
Cyberspace: First Steps,
MIT Press, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry” by F. Randall Farmer and “Habitat Anecdotes” by F. Randall Farmer appeared in different form in the 1990s. “Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry” and “Habitat Anecdotes” copyright © 2001 by F. Randall Farmer. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“True Magic” by Mark Pesce. Copyright © 2001 by Mark Pesce. Published by arrangement with the author.

True Names
by Vernor Vinge. Copyright © 1981 by Vernor Vinge. First published in
Binary Star #5,
Dell Books, 1981. Reprinted by arrangement with the author.

Afterword by Marvin Minsky. Copyright © 1984 by Marvin Minsky. First published in
True Names
by Vernor Vinge, Bluejay Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

True Names
is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novella are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

TRUE NAMES AND THE OPENING OF THE CYBERSPACE FRONTIER

Copyright © 2001 by Vernor Vinge

Preface to the E-book edition copyright © 2014 by James Frenkel

Preface Copyright © 2001 by James Frenkel

Edited and with Introductions by James Frenkel

All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-0-312-86207-7

ISBN: 0-312-86207-5

eISBN 9781466893191

First eBook edition: February 2015