"In a few years every one on the planet will have his own comput- er and it will be connected to everyone else's computer. All information will be free and the planet will be a better place to live and so on . . ." Max's technical sermons bordered on reli- gious preaching. He had bought into the beliefs of Steven Jobs, the young charismatic founder and spiritual guiding force behind Apple Computer. Pierre had heard it before, especially after Max had had a few. His view of a future world with everyone sitting in front of a picture tube playing with numbers and more numbers . . .and then a thought hit him. "Max . . .Max . . ." Pierre was trying to break into another one of Max's Apple pitches. "Yeah . . .oh yeah, sorry Amigo. What's that you say?" Max sipped deeply on a long neck Long Star beer. "These computers you play with . . ." "Not play, work with. Work with!" He pointed emphatically at nothing in particular. "OK, work with. Can these computers play, er, work with music?" Max looked quizzically at Pierre. "Music, sure. You just program it in and out it comes. In fact, the Apple II is the ideal computer to play music. You can add a synthesizer chip and . . ." "What if I don't know anything about computers?" "Well, that makes it a little harder, but why doncha let me show you what I mean." Max smiled wide. This was what he loved, playing with computers and talking to people about them. The subject was still a mystery to the majority of people in 1980. Pierre winced. He realized that if he took up Max on his offer he would be subjected to endless hours of computer war stories and technical esoterica he couldn't care less about. That may be the price though, he thought. I can always stop. Over the following months they became fast friends as Pierre tutored under Max's guiding hand. Pierre found that the Apple had the ability to handle large amounts of data. With the new program called Visi-Calc, he made large charts of his music and their numbers and examined their relationships. As Pierre learned more about applying computers to his studies in musical theory, his questions of Max and demands of the Apple became increasingly complex. One night after several beers and a couple of joints Pierre asked Max what he thought was a simple question. "How can we program the Apple so that it knows what each piece of data means?" he inquired innocently. "You can't do that, man." Max snorted. "Computers, yes even Apples are stupid. They're just a tool. A shovel doesn't know what kind of dirt it's digging, just that it's digging." He laughed out loud at the thought of a smart shovel. Pierre found the analogy worth a prolonged fit of giggles through which he managed to ask, "but what if you told the computer what it meant and it learned from there. On its own. Can't a com- puter learn?"