puter hardware and software are seen asnideal products—especially if they’renbetter than those offered by anyone else.nMITI organized the Institute for NewnGeneration Computer Technologyn(ICOT) which is backed by Fujitsu,nHitachi, Nippon Electric Corporation,nMitsubishi, Oki, Sharp, and Toshiba; NipponnTelephone and Telegraph andnMlTI’s Electrotechnical Laboratory arenalso cooperating. The effort at ICOT is tonbuild that better computer for then1990’s.nVjonventional computers are wondersnat processing data and computing;nthey don’t “think.” What the Japanesenaim to build is so different that it has anspecific name, KIPS: Knowledge InformationnProcessing System. Feigenbaumnand McCorduck define KIPS as a computernthat will have “symbolic inferencencapabilities, coupled with very largenknowledge bases, and superb human interfaces,nall combined with high processingnspeeds.” People can argue until theynare blue in the fece about whether annelectronic device can think or reason,nabout whether the concept of artificial intelligencenisn’t merely an escapee fromnscience fiction pulps. (Indeed, the authorsnpoint out that Americans tend tonphilosophize about such matters whilenthe Japanese are busy with engineering.)nBut the next generation of computersnwill do something that is very much likenthinking, and this is not mere speculation,nfor currently existing “expert systems”nare awfully close. Essentially, an expertnsystem consists of a knowledge base,nan inference system, and an input/outputnsystem. Using a medical analogy, Feigenbaumnand McCorduck explain, “Thenknowledge base you use is what younlearned in medical school and in thenyears of internship, residency, specialization,nand practice. It’s what you learn innthe journals. It consists of facts, prejudices,nbeliefe, and perhaps most important,nheuristic knowledge.” Heuristicsnare rules of thumb, ways that a doctor, almostnautomatically, applies what he hasnin his head to the problem at hand. Thenreason that the system is called an expertnsystem is because the facts and thenheuristics are gleaned from living,nbreathing experts, like medical doctors.nThe inference system is where the “thinking”nis done. The input/output system notnonly performs the activities that its namenimplies, but it also has the capability ofnexplaining why the system as a wholencame to a particular conclusion. One expertnsystem, at the University ofPittsburgh,nis called INTERNIST/CADUCEUS; it performsndiagnoses in internal medicine. Accordingnto the authors, it “covers morenthan 80 percent of all internal medicine;nits knowledge base encompasses aboutn500 diseases and more than 3500 manifestationsnof disease.” Imagine what thisnPoets as^e Letter OnPeter Brazeau: Parts of a World:nWallace Stevens Remembered, AnnOral Biography; Random House;nNewYork.nNotablesnGertrude Stein’s observation aboutngeography can be applied to WallacenStevens as a subject for biography: There’snno thought there. A biography is thenrendering of a particular individual’s life.nWhile everyone knows that Stevens was ancaptivating poet, he, with regard to his dayto-daynexistence, was more a businessman,nan executive at the Hartford Accident andnIndemnity Company, than poet. Thus,ndetails about his eating cold roast beefnevery Wednesday for lunch and hisnpenchant for solitary «^lks are about thenonly things that can be drawn together.nBrazeau employs the oral biography form,nfeatures monolc^es of people who knewnStevens. In effect, the book is merely anvariation on collecting the pencil diavingsnof the poet it mig^t be fesdnating stuff fornscholars who would feel comfortable in thenAcademy of lagado, where Gullivernwatched an ancient student performing “annoperation to reduce human excrement tonits original food”nnnmeans: a patient’s history, vital signs, prescribedndrugs, and other data can be enteredninto the system and it’s likely thatnthe correct diagnosis and treatment willnbe produced by the system. The furtherndevelopment of BSTERNIST/CADUCEUSnwon’t necessarily lead to a situationnwherein physicians line up with autonworkers at unemployment oflfices; it willnpermit medicine to reach areas (throughnremote devices) where it’s currently innshort supply, whether it be the outbacknor outer space. Other expert systemsnexist for fields including bioengineering,nchemistry, computing, and engineering.nAll of this may sound as if the skepticsnare right: CB’s are for truckers, and com-nWhereas the life of a say, DelmorenSchwartz, may be interesting given thensocial intercourse involved in the quotidiannactivities, with Stevens, the poetry’s thenthing In it, the solitary, surly man is trulyngreat His recognition of the importance ofnthe activity that he performed during then”other” part of his life, which he wrotenabout in “The Irrational Element in Poetry,”nis more telling than any comprehensivencollection of recording tape: “it is probablynthe purpose of each of us to write poetry tonfind the good which, in the Platonic sense,nis synonymous with God. One writesnpoetry, then, in order to approach the goodnin what is harmonious and orderly.” Dn^HMil9nApril 1984n