[Fluxus] RIP John McCarthy

[nik gaffney]

> Lisp -to me- is one of the most beautiful things in computers; we can
> solve our problems in a open dialogue with the computer and instead of
> just us explaining something to the computer the computer also teaches
> us; by the time it's done it always looks simple and far easier than we
> could have imagined when we set out.

this idea of language and dialogue is still just as important now, as it
was with the original AI proposal in 1955 . ..

"If a machine can do a job, then an automatic calculator can be
programmed to simulate the machine. The speeds and memory capacities of
present computers may be insufficient to simulate many of the higher
functions of the human brain, but the major obstacle is not lack of
machine capacity, but our inability to write programs taking full
advantage of what we have."

n