Part 95 (1/2)
he said carefully so as not to offend Holland's proud hosts
”But I think the Spook hadDutchman's hand went limp ”Spook? Did you say Spook?” His astonishment was clear
”Yeah, why?” Scott asked
”The Spook? Here? No one has seen him in years”
”Yeah, well he's alive and well and screwing his brains out with three of Amsterda deal?”
”The Spook, ya this is goot,” the Flying Dutchether with approval ”He was the greatest phreak of his day He retired years ago, and has only been seen once or two tiend”
”A phreak?”
”Oh, ya, ya A phreak,” he said speaking rapidly ”Before ho the phone company In America you call it Ma Bell, I believe Cap- tain Crunch was the epitoht Scott, but ht add a sense of levity to his columns ”Captain Crunch?” Scott asked with skepticism
”Ya, Captain Crunch He blew the plastic whistle fro Dutchman held an invisible whistle to his lips ”And it opened up an inside line todistance calls Then he built and sold Blue Boxes which recreated the tones to , they're the same?”
”Ya, ya, especially for the older hackers” The Flying Dutch, so a syste theYou understand?”
”Spook called hacking a technique for investigating new spontane- ously generated lifeforot into quite an argument about it” Scott sounded mildly derisive of the theory
The Dutchrinned wide and rocked back and forth on his heels ”Ya, ya That sounds like the Spook
Cutting to the heart of the issue Ya, you see, we all have our reasons e hack, but ya, Spook is right We forget soiant computer, with thousands and millions of arms, just like the brain The neurons,” he pointed at his head, ”are connected to each other with synapses Just like a co Dutchman's explanation was a little less ethereal than the Spook's and Scott found hiht- enment
”The neuron is a computer It can function independently, but because it's capacity is tiny, a neuron is really quite limited in what it can achieve alone The synapse is like the netire, or phone coether” The Dutchiously as he animatedly dreires and computers in the air to reinforce the concept ”Have you heard of neural networks?”
”Absolutely,” Scott said ”The smart chips that can learn”
”Ya, exactly A neural network is e number of cells, just like the brain's cells, that are only connected to each other in the most rudimentary way”
”Like a baby's brain?” Scott offered
”Ya, ya, just like a baby Very good So like the baby, the neural net grows connections as it learns The ets”
”Both the baby and the network?”
”Ya,” Dutchhed ”So as the millions of neural connec- tions are made, some people learn skills that others don't and some computers are better suited to certain tasks than others
And now there's a global neural network growing Millions ether, until any computer can talk to any other coht The Network is alive, and it is still learning”
Scott was entering a world where the machines, the computers, were personified, indeed imbued with a life of their own by their creators and their prograhly complex world where inter-relatedness is infinitely more important than the specific function Connections are issue Didn't Spook ree?