Mazes

When 10 PRINT runs, it relentlessly provides a maze, but it does not not trap the user in it like a rat. Instead, given the top-down view and the lack of a user-controlled maze walker, the computer may be offering to collaborate with the user in experimenting on virtual rats. This would be a different suggestion than the cinematic, literary, and cartoon representation of behavioral science mazes that encourage people to identify with the rat or mouse. In any case, amid the playful and religious connotations of the maze are those things the experimenter's maze hints at: That the computer is a scientific instrument, for instance, and that the recent history of science has certain dark corners.

When 10 PRINT runs, it relentlessly provides a maze, but it does not not trap the user in it like a rat. Instead, given the top-down view and the lack of a user-controlled maze walker, the computer may be offering to collaborate with the user in experimenting on virtual rats. This would be a different suggestion than the cinematic, literary, and cartoon representation of behavioral science mazes that encourage people to identify with the rat or mouse. In any case, amid the playful and religious connotations of the maze are those things the experimenter's maze hints at: That the computer is a scientific instrument, for instance, and that the recent history of science has certain dark corners.

In the early 1950s the mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon designed a mechanical mouse that appeared to solve the same kind of maze a real mouse might be have been expected to navigate in one of Watson’s behavioral experiments. A foundational figure in modern computing, Shannon named the mouse Theseus, after that mythological explorer of the Cretan labyrinth. Featured in both Time and Life in 1952, Theseus was not a sophisticated piece of artificial intelligence, however. It was simply a wooden mouse on wheels, with a bar magnet inside and copper wire whiskers. The true magic of this mouse resided underneath the maze, in a system of electronic relays that switched position when the mouse’s whiskers touched corresponding walls in the maze above. The first time through a maze, Theseus blundered randomly, propelled by its magnet, flipping the relays underneath the maze whenever it encountered a passage. The next time, Theseus would navigate the maze perfectly, thanks to the relays underneath, which recorded the correct route. This means of negotiating the twisting passages of Shannon’s maze was not mere novelty. As Time explained in 1952, Theseus was “useful in studying telephone switching systems, which are very like labyrinths.” Indeed, George Dyson argues that Theseus inspired the RAND Corporation engineer Paul Baran’s “adaptive message block switching” — the precursor to what is now known as packet switching, the protocol that defines the way data flows on the Internet (150).

In the early 1950s the mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon designed a mechanical mouse that appeared to solve the same kind of maze a real mouse might be have been expected to navigate in one of Watson’s behavioral experiments. A foundational figure in modern computing, Shannon named the mouse Theseus, after that mythological explorer of the Cretan labyrinth. Featured in both Time and Life in 1952, Theseus was not a sophisticated piece of artificial intelligence, however. It was simply a wooden mouse on wheels, with a bar magnet inside and copper wire whiskers. The true magic of this mouse resided underneath the maze, in a system of electronic relays that switched position when the mouse’s whiskers touched corresponding walls in the maze above. The first time through a maze, Theseus blundered randomly, propelled by its magnet, flipping the relays underneath the maze whenever it encountered a passage. The next time, Theseus would navigate the maze perfectly, thanks to the relays underneath, which recorded the correct route. This means of negotiating the twisting passages of Shannon’s maze was not mere novelty. As Time explained in 1952, Theseus was “useful in studying telephone switching systems, which are very like labyrinths.” Indeed, George Dyson argues that Theseus inspired the RAND Corporation engineer Paul Baran’s “adaptive message block switching” — the precursor to what is now known as packet switching, the protocol that defines the way data flows on the Internet (150).