Scott nodded. That was a familiar personification for engineer- ing students. "And, if you turn off the power, it stops functioning. A tempo- rary starvation if you will. It interacts with its environment; in this case with sensors and switches that react to the condi- tions at any particular moment. And lastly, and most important- ly, it has purpose." Scott raised his eyebrows skeptically. "The program, the rules, those are its purpose. It is coinciden- tally the same purpose that its designers had, but nonetheless it has purpose." "That doesn't make it alive. It can't think, as we do, and there is no ego or personality," Scott said smugly. "So what? Since when does plankton or slime mold join Mensa? That's sentience." Spook walked right over Scott's comment. "O.K.," Scott acquiesced. "I'm here to play Devil's Advocate, not make a continent of enemies." "Listen, you better learn something early on," Spook leaned in over the table. His seriousness caught Scott's attention. "You can disagree with us all you want, that's not a problem, most everyone does. But, we do expect fairness, personal and profes- sional." "Meaning?" "Meaning," the dimples in Spook's smiling cheeks radiated cama- raderie. "Don't give up on an argument so early if you believe in it. That's a chicken shit way out of taking a position. Real kindergarten." The Spook finished off his Heineken in two gulps. Scott's tension eased realizing the Spook wanted the debate, the confrontation. This week could be a lot more fun than he had thought. "At any rate, can you buy into that, that the traffic systems are alive?" The Spook asked again. "I'll hold my final judgment in abeyance, but for sake of discus- sion, let's continue," acquiesced Scott. "Fair enough. In 1947, I think that was the year, some guy said that he doubted there would be world wide market for more than three computers." Scott choked on his beer. "Three? Ha! What mental moron came up with that?" "Watson. Thomas Watson, founder of IBM," the Spook said dead pan. "You're kidding." "And what about Phil Estridge?" "Who's that?" "Another IBM'er," said the Spook. "He was kind of a renegade, worked outside of the mainstream corporate IBM mold. His bosses told him, 'hey, we need a small cheap computer to tie to our bigger computers. This little company Apple is selling too many for us not to get involved. By the way, Corporate Headquarters thinks this project is a total waste of money; they've been against it from the outset. So, you have 8 months.' They gave him 8 months to build a computer that would set standards for generations of machines. And, he pulled it off. Damned shame he died.