…When a computer fails, either through a hardware fault or a software error, its behaviour no longer expresses the human purpose which was induced in it, but a different purpose arising from its faulty condition. Failures in the human organism can equally result in aberrant behaviour expressing the purpose of a faulty organism.

The two kinds of behaviour, resulting from human or computer failure, will be quite different. We could perhaps cause the healthy, working computer to simulate human failures, but we cannot make the failed computer behave in the same way as the failed human organism. The computer is like an actor who has learned a part. His ‘knowledge base’ is the script, together with his experience of acting. On this foundation he creates a simulacrum (but only a simulacrum) of a character whose words and actions are not scripted, but arise spontaneously. A sane actor can represent a madman: a mad actor represents only himself, and is spontaneously mad in his own way.