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3 days ago
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Surprising, funny and resolutely unintimidating… Tenen has figured out how to
present a web of complex ideas at human scale.
— Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Book Review — Publishers Weekly — Sean Michaels, The Baffler — Kirkus Reviews — The Washington Post — John Warner, Chicago Tribune — Ben Schneiderman, 118th Note on Human-Centered AI Two German baroque poets walked into a bar. Well, more like, one was a poet and the other a
scholar. And they corresponded by letter. Athanasius Kircher, a neat man in his forties,
spoke and dressed plainly. An established figure by the time of their virtual meeting, he
was slated to take Johannes Kepler’s place at Habsburg court as the royal mathematician. In
years past, he had taught mathematics and ancient languages at Würzburg. Fate found him at
the Collegio Romano in Italy, where his research program expanded to cover geology,
chemistry, and biology. The eager attention from a flamboyant younger admirer clearly annoyed him. The gaunt
Quirinus Kuhlmann struck an odd figure. A childhood speech impediment left him to pursue a
career in letters with fervor. At the University of Jena, known as a bit of a party school
in the early sixteen hundreds, he thought little of his peers or teachers. Instead of
studying law as planned, he cultivated an image of a brooding poet, claiming to receive
divine visions through illness and hallucination. Rumors of heresy circulated, as well as
of his “colossal egotism.” At stake in the virtual meeting between poet and scientist was Kircher’s recent invention
called the Mathematical Organ. Made of polished, “artfully painted” wood, the Organ
resembled a large box. Opening its lid revealed a row of labeled wooden slates, filed
vertically: four columns of fifteen narrow slates, four columns of seven wider ones, and
four columns of five of the largest pieces. When pulled out, each of the slates contained a
string of letters. By consulting the included booklets—which he called, wait for it,
applications—any combination of the planks cohered into a complete, harmonious
composition. Cleverly, depending on which manual was consulted, the same organ could be
used to compose music, write poetry or secret messages, and even do advanced math, such as
reckoning the Easter calendar. The conversation grew more heated with ale. Kircher took the same systematic approach to
all his research projects. The box was made according to the latest scientific principles.
He had recently sold a version of the device to the young Archduke Charles Joseph of
Austria. The child would use it in his studies, with the help of a trusted tutor. Such
devices, Kircher argued, were easy, delightful, and instructive. They were, above all,
useful, allowing untrained operators to create and to perform. Technology was there to
serve, making difficult knowledge accessible to a larger audience. Kuhlmann objected. The
path to knowledge should remain tortuous, accessible only to those (like him!) willing to
walk it properly. The box is just an ingenious game, my ingenious Kircher! Kuhlmann was
starting to slur his words a little. The intelligence lies with you. Without the box, the
young duke remains an idiotic parrot (I’m sorry, he really did write that, only in Latin).
Nothing is retained on the inside. And without inward understanding, the child captures
neither knowledge nor intelligence.
