Steve Talbott

Imagine the potentials of our future if we cultivated an ever higher art of conversation with even a fraction of the energy and social investment we now commit to coaxing new programmed tricks from our computers! The fact that the latter is considered the "development of crucial economic resources" while the former isn't even on the agenda testifies to our relative assessment of humans and machines as the foundation for social evolution. The prevailing idea seems to be that we humans develop only by extending our technical skills: in other regards we are essentially "fixed quantities," destined to remain where we are even as our computers race on ahead of us.