Wednesday, December 20, 2017

How did Multivac change?

This is an interesting question because it is treating a machine like a dynamic character. My initial reaction is that Multivac did not change because it isn't something that is capable of change; however, as a science fiction writer, I am quite certain that Asimov would say that Multivac is subject to the same scientific laws as the rest of the universe. I believe the important law to keep in mind regarding Multivac is the second law of thermodynamics and how it relates to entropy. Entropy can be thought of as a measure of disorder. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. The characters in the story discovered that as Multivac got older and older and was given more and more data, it became more and more unreliable.

"To me, it didn't matter whether the data being supplied Multivac were reliable or not. The results weren't reliable. That much I knew."

Multivac changed by becoming more and more unreliable to the point where the main men working with the machine depended more on their own intuition than the machine that supposedly won the war.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the theme of the chapter Lead?

Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...