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Autmn, Early At North Hall, A Friday Night With Lady Cecily
The first Friday night of Autumn's cooler weather;
Dr. Hook, sings "Sharing the Night Together,"
repeatedly on stereo (the softness rocks);
the dormitory quiet, no outside chatter or knocks;
and you, naked, except for blue thigh-high socks:
parental approval seems like some noxious, nether
world of slapstick, repetitous comedy.
Today you declared your major---Philosophy.
During the pleasures of our intimacy,
you whisper with such quiet confidence to me,
"No Turing machine will ever achieve consciousness,
"because computation is always only more or less.
"Intgegers, irrationals and radicals profess
"only the simple differences of quantity.
"No one can ever quantify a quality:
"no machine understands any word suffixed '--ness.'
"These limits, I suspect, Turing could not abide.
"Perhaps that reason also caused his youthful suicide."
The sad ghost haunts the stalled, static machine---
which is at best a tool, at worst an eyesore too obscene.
Starward
