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For too long now, generations have been bedeviled with the idea, formally called romanticism, that human knowledge has no limits, that man can become either God or Satan, depending on his inclinations. The rider to this proposition is that some human minds are more limitless than others, and wherever that notion finds its most eager receptacles, one starts out with Byron and winds up in Dachau. To be fair, that is not all of romanticism, but it is the worst of it, and the worst has done the world a good deal of damage. For the 18th century, man was man-size. For the 19th and 20th, his size has been boundless, which has meant that he has had little sense of his own proportion in relation to everything else—resulting either in exaggerated self-pity or in self-exaltation—and practically no stable appreciation of his own worth.
Now, suddenly, comes a machine that says in effect: This is the size of man insofar as that size may be measured by this machine. It is not the whole size of man, but it is a definable percentage. Other machines show you how fast you can move and how much you can lift. This one shows you how well you can think, in certain areas. It will do as much as you would have it do, so it will demonstrate the extent of your capabilities. But since it can only go as far as you wish it to go, it will also demonstrate the strength of your volition.
Both these functions are statements of limitation. A machine that tells you how much you can know likewise implies how much you cannot. To learn what one can know is important, but to learn what one cannot know is essential to one's wellbeing. This offers a sense of proportion, and so is thoroughly antiromantic. Yet it is not cold 18th century rationalistic either. The computer simply provides a way of drawing a line between the knowable and the unknowable, between the moon and the moon in man, and it is on that line where people may be able to see their actual size.
Whether the world will look any better for such self-recognition is anybody's guess. The mind, being an enchanted thing, has surprised itself too often to suggest that any discovery about itself will improve economies or governments, much less human nature. On face value, however, the cultural effects of these machines are promising. Every so often in history man makes what he needs. In one sense he made the computer because he needed to think faster. In another, he may have needed to define himself more clearly; he may have sensed a need for intellectual humility. If he needed intellectual humility at this particular time, it may be a sign that he was about to get out of hand again, and so these contraptions, of which he pretends to be so fearful, may in fact be his self-concocted saving grace. The mind is both crafty and mysterious enough to work that way.
—By Roger Rosenblatt