"I, Human" by Esther Cameron with an introduction by
Michael R. Burch
Below is a link to Esther Cameron's thought-provoking essay on Ray Kurzweil's
thought-provoking but disturbing book The Age of Spiritual Machines. Esther (she
and I have become friends, so I feel the informality is warranted) is a poet
of earth-embracing conscience and consciousness, and one would expect her
to respond as she does--thoughtfully, probingly, yet passionately--to Kurzweil's book, which suggests that
automatons will soon make humans (even human poets!) obsolete, or at least
biologically limited, neuron-challenged anachronisms. As a poet whose "day job" is
that of the owner of a computer consultancy with hundreds of clients worldwide, I
happen to know a thing or two about computer technology, having designed and
written thousands of programs over the last twenty-odd years. And I'm
pleased and relieved to say that Esther's arguments are better and more
compelling than Kurzweil's, which bodes well for the future, or at least
for our possible relevance to and inclusion in it . Rather than
getting "all long-winded" here and keeping you from reading Esther's essay,
I'm going to step aside and provide the link
forthwith. "I, Human" appeared in The Antigonish Review,
issue number 129. -- MRB