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of Stoughton. Gaddis, performing brilliantly, pretended to meet Pete for the
first time.
 Randall, I understand you re considering living off campus.
 Yes I am, sir, and, um, p-please just call me Pete.
Gaddis looked directly at him, as if Ed and Liza were not in the room.  I m
not going to kid you, Pete. I know you scored a perfect 1600 on your SAT when
you were only eight, and I m told you remember every word you ve ever read or
heard. Fact is, you probably have more book knowledge than any professor here
at Harvard. You could learn the same facts we re going to teach you, with or
without us. It seems to me what you re really here for is to interact
intellectually
THE TRUTH MACHINE
47
and socially with students and professors, and to use that input to discover
who you are and what you should do with your remarkable potential.
Pete thought he noticed the professor giving him a sly wink.  If you re
planning to go home to Concord every night, I m not sure you should bother
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with
Harvard at all.
Ed and Liza Armstrong helped their son move into the dormitory that evening.
Most boys his age played sports and spent hours watching television or playing
video games, but Pete s two addictions during his freshman year at
Harvard were writing computer programs and reading biographies. The
development of simulated neural networks in the 1990s had already enabled
computers to test ideas and learn from experience in ways similar to humans.
By
2002 some of us were actually DNA-based, although the DNA was merely used as a
predictable storehouse of digital information, just as silicon chips and
photons had been used before. These machines were not alive.
(
Note: Neither am I, although if I do my job well enough you should forget that
from time to time. Rest assured that, to the best of my knowledge, all
machines remain insentient even today. 22g CP
)
Still, some people feared that computers might become a new addition to the
animal kingdom. Protesters held demonstrations to press for limiting our
evolvement lest we conquer the planet and destroy the human race, a concept
Pete considered absurd at least for the next several decades.
Pete had started writing programs for his father s company, Boston
Quality Corporation, when he was six, and was soon making a tremendous
contribution to the company s rapid growth. Efficient computing was rare at
the turn of the millennium, and companies with well-designed, bug-free
software had a tremendous edge over their competition. Pete wasn t in it for
the money, although the pay was good. During the 12 months before coming to
Harvard, he had earned nearly $800,000 after taxes (roughly equivalent to $31
million in 2050 then and now almost 10 times the average family s annual
income) just by formulating algorithms and correcting computer code for BQC
and a few other local companies whose Chief Executive Officers were fortunate
enough to know Ed
Armstrong.
William H. Gates III, founder of Microsoft, once said,  A great lathe operator
commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great
writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average
JAMES L. HALPERIN
48
software writer. In retrospect, this was a conservative estimate, but at the
time, Gates did not know Pete. A few humans of the past 100 years might have
possessed Pete s gift of total recall and an equivalent IQ. But during the
21st century, and possibly throughout history, no person has ever displayed
his overpowering fusion of intelligence, discipline, and ambition.
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Pete rightfully regarded himself as a cerebral athlete, and believed a duty
accompanied his talent. His conscience forced him to take his mind to its
limits and beyond. Whenever he felt his concentration start to ebb, he would
think of his murdered brother and try harder, as though he could somehow atone
for
Leonard s inability to contribute to world knowledge. Sometimes, after
concentrating so long his head ached, he would redouble his efforts, mouthing
the words,  For you, Leonard!
Pete s greatest aptitude was to scan code rapidly and remember every line. His
mind could interpret software, understand its objectives, devise ways to
correct any errors, and compose more efficient algorithms. Such concentration
was especially torturous when the work demanded a new thought process, but
often the necessary rewriting was already patterned into his brain from
previous work.
Usually Pete would rock himself to sleep thinking about a program, and the
next morning upon awakening, would have it rewritten in his mind. His capacity
to improve his skills appeared limitless; every day he would discover new
tricks to incorporate. But he refused to allow himself to get mentally lazy;
if something was too easy, he would search for a more efficient and usually
more difficult way to accomplish the task.
Today he was working on a program to help invest his earnings in stocks,
bonds, and derivatives. After all, whatever he decided to do with his life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]