Parse and Ye Shall Find:  Database as Dialogue

Back in the day, Alan Turing conceived of a test which measured a computer's ability to seem human. An individual would have a series of conversations with a computer terminal. Sometimes a human would be on the other end of the connection answering back, and sometimes it would be software answering back. If the individual was unable to differentiate between the humans and the software, the software was said to have passed the Turing Test. Not that the software was necessarily "artificially intelligent," but that the software was able to trick a human into thinking it was human.

When these test were first performed, the software kept revealing itself as software because it had been programmed not to lie. Very unhuman.

Today, we regularly querry search software which parses a huge database of information called the internet, a database of information created by humans. Search software has now become our guide, our filter, our valet into the hive mind, the noosphere, the sum knowledge of all external human consciousness. Now we're talking to the world, and database search software is our mediator. If the responses sound human, they are.

Still, betwixt the cup and the lip is many a slip.