[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

I shall wait for some long-headed Jeeves to explain.

Bertie,

Imagine Eliza, on steroids. Eliza was a therapist, back in the 60's. If you were lying on the couch, and you said to her, "I feel a great sense of ennui," she would say "Why do you feel that way?"

If you said "You always answer my anguish with questions," she would say "How does that make you feel?"

Eliza was very popular, but not very smart. Her whole brain fit on just a few screens. It turned out, to everyone's dismay, that coding a smarter therapist quickly got immensely complicated.

Twenty years before she was born, Alan Turing challenged everyone to conceive her. Turing, you'll remember, was your countryman, who helped crack the German war codes. Back then, everyone figured it wouldn't take very long, what with the pace of advances. After all, the cell phone in your pocket has more computing power than a computer that took up a whole floor then...

But even now, no-one has written an Eliza that would fool even the most self-involved patient, lying on a couch and staring at the ceiling while he unburdened himself. This is your big chance. You can easily out-do George Bernard Shaw!

Thanks,

Jeeves