Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

18 HOW THE MIND WORKSputers of 1960s pop culture were not tempted only by selfishness andpower, as we see in the comedian Allan Sherman's song "Automation,"sung to the tune of "Fascination":It was automation, I know.That was what was making the factory go/It was IBM, it was Univac, y-It was all those gears going clickety'clack, dear.I thought automation was keerfTill you were replaced by,a ten-ton machine.It was a computer thai-tore us apart, dear,Automation broke *hy heart. . . .It was automation, I'm told,That's why I got fired and I'm out/fn the cold.How could I have known, when the 503Started in to blink, it was winking at me, dear?I thought it was just som^mishapWhen it sidled over and sat on my lap.But when it said "Lrove you" and gave me a hug, dear,That's when I pj,*fled out. . . its . . . plug.But for all its moonstruck madness, love is no bug oj>er35frnr malfunction.The mind is never so wonderfully cp»c€ntrated as when itturns to love, and there must be intricaj^^alculations that carry out thepeculiar logic of attraction, infatuation, courtship, coyness, surrender,commitment, malaise, phij^rtaering, jealousy, desertion, andhenrtbreak.And in the end, as mygrandmother used to say, everypetnnds a cover;most people—jj*duding, significantly, all of our^arlcestors—manage topair up long'enough to produce viable chikJrerT Imagine how many linesof programming it would take to duplieale that!Robot design is a kind of consciousness-raising. We tend to be blaseabout our mental lives. We open our eyes, and familiar-articles presentthemselves; we will our limbs to move, and objects and bodies! float intoplace; we awaken from a dream, and return to a comfortingly ptedictable