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∂AIL Fr. Neil Hurley, S.J.↓Department of Communications
↓Fordham University↓Bronx, New York 10458∞

Dear Father Hurley:

	Thanks for your July 16 letter and the reprint of your 1967
article.  Sorry about the delay in answering, but I just fished your
letter out of the bag of things I took to read at home.

	Enclosed are three reprints, one dealing with artificial intelligence
and one with home computer terminals.  The third is a long book
review which contains my only statement of my own opinions on
a number of issues.

	It seems to me that the 1967 article was mistaken in its
estimate of the pace of change.  Teilhard de Chardin's age of the
No%C:%1osphere hasn't happened yet, and I don't think it will happen
for a while yet.  There are several reasons.

	1. The material side of man's life remains more important
than he estimated.  The ability to compute is not the same as the
ability to make cars and supply them with gasoline or to grow food.
When full capability robots become available, this will change, but
I think we are one or more conceptual breakthroughs away from it
yet.

	2. The freshman with a computer terminal is not yet the
equal of a senior without it.  In the first place, access to the
terminal still doesn't give access to many sources of information.
My dream of terminal access to the Library of Congress is still
years from being realized.  The second reason is the slow progress
of artificial intelligence again.  No present computer aids compare
with a tutor in helpfulness to the freshman.

	3. Some of the slow progress since 1967 is because of
fundamental scientific difficulties.  The hardware of 1967 wasn't
up to our dreams, but this isn't he main problem today, although
cost is still an important consideration.

	However, I think a major reason for the lack of progress
was the Cultural Revolution in America, which was similar in
motivation, though not as disastrous in result, to the Cultural
Revolution in China.  A generation of people who might have
contributed to the development of the No%C:%1osphere devoted themselves
to sterile ideological squabbling, and we are only beginning
to recover from it.

	I hope this is of some interest, and the papers are of
some use.

.reg