Ha...Therepy

First off I wanted to say that I really enjoyed Joesph Weizenbaum's article, "From Computer Power and Human Reason". His program is so simple and yet so powerful in the same respect. While Mr. W is no psychotherapist he understands enough to be able to program a computer to help solve people's most intimate and challenging problems. The most amusing part of this whole story is this idea of psychologists and how they are contributing to society. People pay these therapists hundreds of dollars an hour to have them listen to their "awful" life problems then repeat the same questions back to them. I like the fact that it took a computer scientist to come up with simple computer program to show the world that all it might take is a simple program to get people to understand that they are responsible for their own problems.

But I do agree with Tati in how many people require someone to see and react to their intense, human emotions. Computers right now can never feel what humans can. Maybe someday, computers will have some sort of a feelings, like in iRobot, where the random breaks in code will give the robot a soul. Metal beings running on electric impulses are going to have different feelings then carbon beings running on electric impulses.

Some people have serious problems like say, bi polar disorder, where a computer would have a hard time treating that sort of disease. There needs to be a true human body with a human mind and feelings to be able to assess and help treat these types of disorders.