Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man

1124 Words5 Pages
In Michael Crichton’s book, The Terminal Man, a revolutionary brain surgery was performed on a man named Harry Benson. Harry Benson suffered from seizures, which caused him to blackout and become violent. Dr. McPherson, head of the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit (NPS), believed the procedure could cure Benson’s seizures. This story took place over a five day period in 1971. Benson was in a car accident, which caused him to develop acute disinhibitory lesion (ADL) and have blackouts, which lasted from a few minutes to an hour. During these blackout, he would become violent. The stage three procedure was designed to cure Benson’s seizures by placing electrodes inside his brain. Benson’s ADL caused a portion of the brain to become damaged and…show more content…
Artificial intelligence is having a computer, a machine, or a software program human intellectual tasks. When this book was written in 1972, artificial intelligence was at an early stage. Scientists believed that by implanting a computer and electrodes in Benson’s shoulder and brain, that they could control his seizures and effectively control his mind. This is exactly what Benson was afraid of: being controlled by a greater computer with a larger capacity than the human brain. An early study at Dartmouth called A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in August of 1955 studied the components of artificial intelligence. “We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to stimulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves,” (McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, Shannon 1). This early research was one of the key components in artificial intelligence

    More about Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man

      Open Document