Take that, Hewlett-Packard

I read recently that by 2020, computers will be able to process information just as the human brain does.

By 2020? I'll bet you thought they were already there.

No. Despite their ubiquitous presence these days, and our utter reliance on them, computers are still those little buggers who, in the words of one computer-maven I know, "Do stupid things incredibly fast." Make no mistake: artificial intelligence is still in its infancy. Computers may seem to be "smart," but all they really are is quick. High-speed morons, in other words. IBM can build a computer that will beat Garry Kasparov at chess, but that's only because chess is a semi-mathematical activity. So is music, and we're far from building a computer that can compose a symphony.

I'd like to hear a symphony composed by a computer. I'll bet it would sound like P.D.Q. Bach.

I have a short list of words that I truly hate, and one of them is "nuanced." Journalists, who love to imitate each other, created this word, and for some reason, probably because they think it makes them sound educated, they're now using it as often as they can come up with excuses to. God, how sick I am of picking up a newspaper and reading about how some novelist's or essayist's style, or some politician's speech, was "nuanced." It's stupid, like all words that journalists make fetishes of. ("Empathize" and "resonate" are also on my list of fingernails-on-chalkboard words.)

But when I contemplate how far computers have to go before they truly mount a challenge to the human brain, before we are absolutely and without any doubt in danger of a situation such as that depicted in the 1971 film Colossus: The Forbin Project, wherein a computer armed with nuclear weapons seizes control of the world, "nuance" is a word that comes to mind.

The human brain is, at least for now, capable of nuance, in terms of data recovery, far beyond anything a computer can do. Or if you want to get sniffy, "heuristic incremental capability" is what we still have more of than the chips and wires do. (That for my sniffy pal in Moscow, Russia who provided me with the term. Thanks, Vasily.)

Shaking your head? Don't think so? Okay, Mr. or Ms. Smarty-Pants, read on.

I had an experience just this morning, a quiet, seconds-only experience, which gave me an insight into the gymnastics of which the human brain is capable. Even mine, if you can believe that.

We've all had the experience of trying to remember a name, a book title or a place, and, unable to think of it, we've simply gone about our business, only to have the name, book title or place pop into our heads minutes or hours later. Yes, our brains are just like computers in that respect: (actually, it's the other way around--this is no chicken-and-egg conundrum; the brain came first) they can and do conduct file searches even while we're otherwise occupied.

But let me see a computer pull a piece of data-retrieving sleight-of-hand like the one my own sleep-bedraggled brain, just getting jump-started on a cup of Folgers for the day ahead, pulled this morning.

Over my coffee, I was reading in a book entitled Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Study of his Life and Writings, by F.C. Green. (Cambridge University Press, 1955.) My interest in Rousseau was piqued by my having just finished Roger Pearson's new book Voltaire Almighty, which of course touched upon the prickly relationship between these two eighteenth-century thinkers.

Green relates a conversation between Rousseau and his father, when Rousseau was a little boy. "Jean-Jacques, parlon de ta mere," the father is supposed to have said, whereupon the boy replied, "He bien, mon pere, nous allons donc pleurer."

No, I don't speak French. I had to go to the footnote to see what this exchange meant. (For my fellow non-Francophones out there, it's something like "Let's talk about your mother." "Okay, Dad, then we're going to cry.")

Prepare to witness a truly amazing piece of epistemological terpsichore. (Yeah, that was deliberate.)

As I looked at the page, I focused on the world "pleurer," meaning "to cry." "Pleurer" obviously has the same lexical root as the English word "pleurisy," which describes an upper-respiratory disease.

When I was 12 years old, in the summer of 1968, my family moved from Chula Vista, California to Spokane, Washington. My sisters and I were all anticipating (with dread, in my case) starting school that fall in new schools where we would not know anyone and would be the "new kids in class." It was probably just that anticipation that made the last few, precious moments of carefree summer vacation burn themselves into my memory like polaroids. But whatever the cause, I have carried in my head these many years a mental snapshot of what might have been my last Sunday night of vacation that particular summer.

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was a Sunday-night staple in my family in those days. We kids seldom missed it. It was an hour-long television program, and would often broadcast Disney feature films over two Sundays. Animal films were a favorite, and on this particular late-summer Sunday evening, Disney was offering up its 1962 animal comedy Sammy, The Way-Out Seal, starring Robert Culp and Patricia Barry, with Billy Mumy (pre-Lost In Space) in the kid role.

I also remember that night's supper. No doubt because we had just moved, and my parents were probably busy unpacking and putting things away, Dad decided to spare Mom the chore of cooking that night. He ordered chicken dinners for the family from Chicken Delight, a company which has long since vanished, but was something of a pioneer in the fast-food business. In the 1960s, Chicken Delight became one of the very first companies ever to advertise delivery of a full hot meal right to your doorstep. I remember their advertising jingle: "Don't cook tonight, call Chicken Delight." That night, that's exactly what my folks did.

There's a scene in Sammy, The Way-Out Seal in which Robert Culp, having just been ignominiously dunked in the water in a mishap caused (of course) by Sammy the seal, is standing in front of the bathroom mirror informing his wife that he now expects to get "pleurisy."

Because I was 12, it might be that this was the first time I had ever heard the word "pleurisy." Apparently it had an odd sound to my young ear, because I remembered it. But in any case, this morning as I sat over my coffee and came across the French word "pleurer" in reading about Rousseau, I focused on it for just a second or two, and like a rock skipping across a pond, my mind made a series of incredible leaps: "Pleurer; pleurisy; Disney; Robert Culp; Sunday night; summer vacation, 1968; Spokane, Washington; Chicken Delight; junior high school."

A vivid mental snippet of that Sunday evening in my childhood played itself back in my mind, clear as DVD, complete with what we had for dinner, and all because I focused for just a brief moment on a French word, encountered in a book 38 years later.

Think a computer can do that? Not yet.

And by the way, I think Rousseau would have been fascinated by all of this, as interested as he was in the mysteries of consciousness and memory.

Check back with me in 2020, H-P.