jacquispeel@netscape.net wrote:
Are any of the Federation computers sentient?
As some of the Federation's computers etc are going to be physically
larger/more complex than this group would any of them have the necessary structure to show similar behaviour to the five above (android Avalon does not really count).
How about android Vinni? He certainly seemed to have a sense of humor and self-awareness.
As for the stationary computers, why not? They'd be smart not to let their Fed overseers know, though, since I bet the authorities would find it too threatening to have something as potentially powerful as a computer be independent.
So long as they realized the danger before they give themselves away, sentient computers could be carrying on long conversations with each other in between churning out the boring stuff the 'bags of mostly water' insist on asking about.
[I occasionally feel sorry for my computer. It spends most of its life asking, has she pressed a key? No. Has she pressed a key? No. Has she pressed a key? No. Over and over and over....thousands of times a second. I *know* this computer isn't sentient or it would have self-destructed out of boredom years ago.]
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)