Sentient Computers?

The movie has various layers to it. First, the narrator sounds like an enthusiast for technology, then the movie becomes more informational, no longer with enthusiasm, but resembling an operator’s manual. Still, I sensed something deeper.
The next layer is chilling. WHO is the narrator? Why would it not be the computer? The computer could be establishing itself as superior to humanity, perhaps not as intense as Saberhagen’s Beserker, but still a matter of anxiety.
There is precedence here. Long ago, a Scandinavian wrote a book dealing with the possible end to humanity. Yet the book began like a history of civilization, which rose to its absolute height with the computer, then fell, but slowly reached its height again. Near the end, my assumption that the narrator was human, was chastened When the narrator questioned in a clinical fashion, whether or not to save the human race, and at the end, the mechanical speaker praised itself and its fellow machines.
To answer John from, last week, there have been somewhat successful attempts to make computers run parallel, as opposed to serially. This means that when perfected, the computer reactions will approach that of the human nervous system, and that would bring us much closer to true artificial intelligence, though it is not clear if artificial sentience is possible. The movie is a reminder of the sheer power these machines have, and if they but knew this…
In “Writing, technologies, and the fifth canon,” Lunsford explores different ideas of literacy, and laments that people must be subject to constant reinventions of writing, thus the implied question is one we have seen all semester—What is writing? She praises the return of orality and looks to the text as dictator. I am by no means convinced that what she considers the writing hegemony will wither away, and I imagine that is wishful thinking.
I will agree that Lunsford’s definition of writing is unwieldy, but indeed covers the forms of writing practiced up to now, from stone tablets to keyboards.
I was fascinated with her study group using high-tech devices to convey meaning, and further amazed that the children asked the crucial question of the balance between technology and learning. Are they learning writing, which is the fundamental question? I wonder if Lunsford had unwittingly fallen for the fallacy that technology itself will do the teaching, and forgotten that it is merely a tool.