A quote from the aforementioned Ashes to Ashes:
Artificial intelligence.
Sounds like something froma science fiction movie? Sure, but it is also military-industrial jargon that you might encounter any Sunday in the L.A. Times classifieds under “Scientific Help Wanted.” Artificial intelligence is the newest of the growth and glamour technological pursuits of our spave-ages society–mostly in military applications at the present state of development, but it has already crept into various private enterprises. The very term implies that more is under contemplation than mere data-mashing, which is mainly what a computer does; it suggests some sort of silcone brain that can reason both deductively and inductively, make decisions and execute them–the real-life equivalent of the old (ten years ago, I guess, is old by present standards) science fiction themes concerning the domination of mankind by monster computers.
But I digress. I was trying to make the point that our highly complex society of today is being managed, in most parts that really count, by computer technology and “artificial intelligence.” A lot of the chaos that erupts in our personal lives, and in our personal interactions with a computer-managed society, is caused when an individual or action does not match some mathematical model that is attempting to orchestrate the social conventions in a given sphere of activity.
It sounds like he’s lamenting the state of the Internet today.
But he published it in 1986, before the Internet was widely adopted.
