That kid's book I was reading yesterday, Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, turned out to be pretty interesting in retrospect! One point in particular caught my eye: Professor Bullfinch, the sagacious and stereotypical man of science who's Danny's father-figure and mentor, asserts that even something like a refrigerator can be said to "think": a thermostatic control loop has a memory and a simple electromechanical program for doing a particular job, and one could perhaps call that "thinking" although it's extremely limited in scope. I'm reminded of the ubiquitous joke about having a single brain cell, only in this case the "cell" is the thermostatic mechanism.
There's a sexist subplot in the book, I must report. Danny's best friend from earlier books, Joe, who isn't spectacularly nerdy, gets jealous that Danny's immediately taken with his new nerd friend Irene, which causes Joe to start fuming and fulminating about how "dames" only cause trouble, Irene won't stand for it, and for a while there's a big falling-out. Joe eventually repents and apologizes to Irene...if only it were that easy in reality, huh?
~Χαρά
