Dreams and Beasts
"Writing
in his diary in 1852, Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected that 'Dreams
and beasts are two keys by which we are to find the secrets of
our nature. . .they are our test objects'. . .Like dreams and
beasts, the computer stands on the margins.
It is
a mind that is not a mind. It is inanimate yet interactive. It
doesn't think yet neither is it external to thought. It is an
object, ultimately a mechanism, but it behaves, interacts, and
seems in a certain sense to know. . . . The computer takes us
beyond dreams and beasts because it enables us to contemplate
dreams that do not need beasts.
The computer is an evocative object that causes old boundaries
to be negotiated."
Sherry
Turkle, Life on the Screen
