"The problem is not that computers might someday resemble humans. The problem is that they already

[elfs]

Rooms of Algebraic Theology

Where once an enduring house was,
now a cerebral structure crosses our path, completely
belonging to the realm of concepts, as though it still stood in the brain.
Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power,
formless as the straining energy that it wrests from the earth.
Temples are no longer known.

There are other fascinating articles on the website; don't be surprised if the more SFnal among you spend all day reading it.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The association of "god" (lower case 'g') with omniscience or omnipresence is certainly a Judeo-Christian concept. The conceit of the article lines up nicely with the rather common theme in near-modern SF that there are information-heavy disciplines that already approach hermeneutics: we do not know and can not understand the process by which some computers approach their answers; between the programming we give them and the conclusion they produce, there is a layer of complexity sufficiently large that one human being cannot hold it within his head. The four-color problem in two-dimensional topology was the first such problem: the "aha" moment when a mathematical proof becomes clear and insightful will never occur to a human being examining that theorem because the answer is too complex for a human being to understand.

[rkda.livejournal.com]

This lends itself to one of my favorite quotes...

"Any technology, sufficiently advanced, becomes indistinguishable from magic!"

It is all a matter of perspective in terms of complexity. Some things which seem quite complex to me, are trivial to others, and vice-versa. For those who understand how computation is achieved in a modern computer, there is nothing mystical about it, and for those who don't understand it, it is all magic.

One of the arguments against that sort of understanding, is the "emergent behavior" that occurs when any complex system exceeds some critical threshold. In response, I often point to the chemistry of H2O and then challenge them to produce the emergent behavior of ocean waves starting with atomic physics. Yet, those same people have no problem going to the beach and expecting to see the ocean. It is all a matter of perspective as to what is complex, and at what level of detail you want to understand it.

RKDA