Making the Computer ‘Brained’

Abstract

In his play Prometheus Bound; Aeschylus, a Greek dramatist describes how a titan, Prometheus freed mankind of ignorance and enlightened them with the gift of knowledge by deceiving the Greek god Zeus; and how this transgression incurred the wrath of Zeus. This brings in the light significance of knowledge and the fact that since time immemorial, there has been a struggle to acquire knowledge.

For men at first had eyes but saw no purpose; they had ears but did not hear. Like the shapes of dreams they dragged through their long lives and handled all things in bewilderment and confusion. They did not knew of building houses with bricks to face the sun; they did not how to work with wood. They lived like swarming ants in holes within the ground, in sunless caves of the earth. For them there was no secure token by which to tell winter nor the flowering spring nor the summer with its crops; all their doings were indeed without intelligent calculations until I showed them the rising of stars and their setting, hard to observe. And further, I discovered to them numbering, pre-eminent among subtle devices and the combining of letters as a means of remembering all things, the Muses’ mother skilled in craft. It was I who first yoked beasts for them, in the yokes and made of those beasts the slaves of trace chain and pack saddle that they might be man’s substitute in the hardest tasks; and I harnessed to the carriage so that they loved the rein, horses the crowning pride of rich man’s luxury. It was I and none other who discovered ships and sail driven wagons that the sea buffets. Such were the contrivances that I discovered for men.

—AESCHYLUS, Prometheus Bound