Innovative?

I was looking in this 1962 journal from the Naval Research Lab, trying to find gadgets and gimmicks for my next graphics project. One issue in the volume started with this elegant bit of parody and wordplay.

Transcribing:

= = = = = START QUOTE:

Computers and Data Processors, North America

A Fourth-Generation, Hybrid, Self-Organizing, Bionic, Implicitly and Heuristically Programmed, Pattern-Recognizing, Learning, NeuralDynamic, Cybernetic, Goal-Seeking, Problem-Solving, Self-Replicating, Evolutionary, Cluster-Seeking, Piece-Wise Linear, Hyperquadric, Self-Teaching, Time-Shared, On-Line, Real Time, ConversationalMode, Interactive, Sketch-Pad, Nanosecond Speed, Non-Parametric, Feature Extracting, Optimal, Stochastic, Artifically Intelligent, Recursive, List-Processing, Interruptible, Robotological, Computing Automaton and Symbol Manipulator That Works on a Syntax-Directed, Cybercultural, Systems Approach With a Mass, Large Scale, Integrated-Microcircuit, Cryogenic, Thin Film, Associative , ContentAddressable, Modular, Hierarchical, Virtual Memory Capable of Graphic Communication Among Any Number and Variety of ManMachine Interfaces.

Louis Fein (Consultant)
Palo Alto, California

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

The content-free paragraph given above serves two purposes simultaneously; it is at once both the title of this paper and the paper itself. Multiplexed!

Partially, ambivalently, and argumentatively supported by the dis ESTABLISHMENT — the elite government members of the Artificial Intelligentsia.

= = = = = END QUOTE.

AI hype hasn’t changed one nanobit since 1962. All of those buzzwords are still buzzing. The only difference is that our stoned Tech Tyrants are no longer capable of self-parody and self-examination and humor.

Hmm. Is that a general rule? Hallucinogens make you rigid and humorless? It feels right but I can’t pin it down. Google certainly doesn’t like the correlation.

There wasn’t much humor or self-parody among hippies, but that could be a function of age. Adolescents are always idealistic and absolutist.

It could also be ethnic. The early cybernetics types included a lot of Jews. Fein, Weizenbaum, Minsky. If you want dark humor and self-examination, Jews will supply it. Modern tech types are increasingly Chinese and Indian.