Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 02/86 - checked

February 1986:

Just for a second, try this for size: The time is 5004 AD, on a Thursday. The archeologist has had a bad day so far, having unearthed the seventh straight stockpile of PC-ATs in as many hours. Its all very well finding these piles of strange boxes, but what do they mean? What do they say about how those humans lived all those years ago.

There are no humans on planet earth now, of course. They are all long gone, having mysteriously disappeared some 3000 years ago for no apparent reason which the archeologist could fathom. That, of course, was why it was here on the planet now.

In the stockpiles of PC-ATs it could recognise its own early ancestors in humanity's puny attempts to create a more meaningful and logical life-form. What it could not work out, however, is where humanity had got it wrong. Puny the PC-AT certainly was, but the robot could recognise the creation of the intellectual amoebae that all archeologists now knew the PC-AT to be. What was missing was the life force that made it work or, as seemed more probably the case, that made it not work, thus destroying its creators.

The archeologist idly pushed its titanium-alloy hand-grasp deep into the dust in the floor of the cavern where the stockpile lay. It felt a certain calmness within the slab-like, clinical walls of what the humans, in their obvious biological confusions, had called a `where house?'. The sensors in the grasp nudged gently against something, a pile of paper. Pulling it out of the dust, the archeologist suddenly realised just what had been discovered. As the pages fanned out and unfolded it became instantly clear that this was the missing link, the key to what happened to the humans. The pages seemed full of strange hieroglyphics, but the archeologist had been pre-programmed to cope with human writings. Even so, much of it was in a strange cryptic form of the language which was unfamiliar to it. There were occasional words and phrases, such as GOTO and IF...THEN, which it understood.

Slowly it unraveled the mystery. Here was obviously some strange, ritualistic instructions, probably religious in nature, which the humans blindly obeyed. It knew from other records that humans were extremely good at doing what they told themselves they ought to do, even against their better judgement.

The picture became clear with more detailed examination of the folded sheets of paper fanned out before it. So far as the archeologist could determine things, the sheets carried the instructions which took humanity to its destruction. They showed that if N was greater than 100 (a number of people that would not make a viable community on its own) then individual humans were to GOTO the NOMINAL LEDGER. Now it knew what a ledge was and could guess that the diminutive `ledger' was a particularly small one which was only nominally there anyway.

Once there, each individual was to perform a TRIAL BALANCE. The archeologist could see that, while standing on a very small nominal ledge, such a feat would prove all but impossible. That, it was now clear, was what had happened to the human race. "Bunch of dozos", was its entirely logical thought.

And are we dozos, I wonder? It may well be highly likely, for we seem content to limit the exploitation of ourselves and our developments to those things which make money, here, now.

That means we develop something like the computer which is, or has the capability of becoming, the intellectual amoebae that our archeologist refered to. To remember what Darwin reckons happened to the amoebae in the fullness of time, just take a look in the mirror.

And yet to what purpose do we put this development. What training do we give to this potential intellect? The answer, as so often with the human race, is that we give it the menial tasks that directly service the great god Mammon. Computers run accounts programs, they run financial spreadsheets, and they run word processors which write financial reports. In servicing Mammon, those who have a finger in the pie also make money themselves, making Mammon that much bigger and more in need of our ministrations.

Anyone who steps outside this normality is frowned upon. Anyone who does something for other than the money is treated as being vaguely disreputable, for reasons that cannot ever be quite determined. Some who have done it recently, and found that they thoroughly enjoyed the experience, are those involved in the Halley's Comet presentation at the British Museum. (Before anyone says anything: yes, I do appreciate that they have done it for the publicity, which is just what I'm going to give them now).

As part of the general brouhaha about the visit of Halley's Comet, the Museum has mounted an exhibition of ancient records attesting to it past visitations. Many of these are fascinating Babylonian clay tablets.

Andre Jay of XAT and Bruce Marquart of Ashton Tate joined with Christopher Walker of the British Museum in producing some fascinating computer programs that showed graphically the original Babylonian writing, a phonetic English transcription and an English translation of what it all meant. This was then followed by a graphics show of the Comet as tracked by the Babylonians 2000 years ago. All of this ran on some Apple Mackintoshes, provided by Personal Computers (as one of the `old' guys in the PC business, managing director Mike Sterland obviously feels the same affinity I do with the Babylonians).

What they have produced goes a long way to explaining to the uninitiated (i.e. me) how the Babylonians wrote. The most interesting aspect is that their writing conventions make their words machine-readable, as they are based on collections of straight lines and arrow heads. Even more interesting, from the point of view of the subversion of Mammon, is that these people became involved, and then absorbed by the project, despite others in the industry greeting the work with a monumental `Eh?"

More power to their elbow, say I, for doing something that is not just money-making, but is utilising the potential of the computer to a greater purpose than kissing Mammon's boots. That way lies the hope of humanity avoiding a trial balance on the nominal ledger.

And by the way, don't forget that the coming of Halley's Comet usually heralds the toppling of kings and empires. Now, something got to Sinclair and Acorn early, but what about IBM?

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