Hundred is wise because of his age but slow-thinking because of irreversible polarization. Self-conscious motiles are called persons. Each had a creator and ancestors stretching back to a great-grandcreator and beyond. On an "ancient day":
"...some forgotten savage genius made the first crude spark gap and electricity was tamed." (p. 183)
- like Prometheus taming fire but what the persons do not know is that that "savage genius" was organic.
Lure accumulators emit signals that make small motiles enter their grinders. Obviously, self-maintaining mechanisms left to their own devices have evolved to compete and survive but how did they become conscious? Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation but can that same qualitative transformation occur in mechanistic sensitivity? Can a camera become an eye or a microphone become an ear?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! I completely missed that ingenious Promethean allusion made by Anderson in my previous readings of "Epilogue." And that "savage genius" was human!
Ad astra! Sean
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