The eerie interface of man and machine (Life Magazine, October 1967)

John Graham-Cumming's blog: The eerie interface of man and machine (Life Magazine, October 1967)

2026-06-23

The October 1967 edition of Life Magazine covered the ongoing Vietnam War but also contained a long article helping readers understand how "man's most complex machine" (the computer) worked. There's a scan available on Google Life archive here, but I've rescanned it to keep the full two and three page spreads intact.

The final part of the special is entitled The eerie interface of man and machine and begins by speculating on whether a learning machine could be built:<br>Can a computing machine be taught to "think" in the broadest sense, as the human brain can think and learn? Efforts have been made in this direction, based on accumulating knowledge of how the human brain works. The brain is, in effect, a whole hierarchy of computers with much of its basic input provided by ranks of lesser computers down the line. The information gathered by the retina of the eye, for instance, is not simply shunted along to the brain. Instead, the retina acts like a tiny, highly sophisticated computer, analyzing the visual data one passing on only the significant results. In the brain itself further analysis takes place as information moves from one level to another and is processed in computerlike fashion all along the way until a unified perception results.<br>In a computer. electric pulses travel specific places along specific conduits to produce their own version of a unified perception in the form of an answer. Not so in the brain. One brain cell, or neuron, may pulse another, as the electronic switches in a computer pulse each other, but the similarity ends there. Each neuron has inputs from a number of other nerve cells, so that in one way or another all the 10 billion or so neurons in the brain are interconnected directly or indirectly. (The system provides whole arrays of incredibly complex feedback loops in which some cells qualify the operations of others, stimulating them to respond to certain incoming signals and inhibiting their responses to others.<br>Theoretically it would be possible, as one computer scientist has noted, to hook together hierarchies of computers to simulate the complex layers of the brain. The gear necessary to give this supercomputer even 1/20th human brain's capacity would fill several barns. And the fact is that no one would really know how to hook together such an array. Scientists have a general idea about how the brain functions, but a wiring diagram, or anything like is totally lacking and seems likely to remain elusive for a long time to come. Even if a wiring diagram came to hand, the problem of writing a program for such a contraption would present an equally enormous obstacle. Reflecting on the difficulties, a veteran programmer said, "It takes us 15 to 20 years to program our children. And they can really learn-sometimes. But with the kind of machine you're talking about, you would have to feed in millions of separate little things every day to equal what a child takes in. And after three years of this kind of business, it still might not have learned to reason or work out its own programs. You ask it to add 2 and 2, and maybe it says 5.

The article also mentions something that any programmer will recognize immediately:

The eerie interface of man and machine (Life Magazine, October 1967)

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