The topic of thought is one area of psychology, and many observers have considered this aspect in connection with robots and computers: some of the old worries about AI (artificial intelligence) were closely linked to the question of whether computers could think. The first massive electronic computers, capable of rapid (if often unreliable) computation and little or no creative activity, were soon named “electronic brains”. A reaction to this terminology quickly followed: To put them in their place, computers were called “high-speed idiots”, an effort to protect human vanity. In such a climate, the possibility of computers actually being alive was rarely considered: it was bad enough that computers might be capable of thought. But not everyone realized the implications of the expression the “high-speed idiot” tag. It has not been pointed out often enough that even the human idiot is one of the most intelligent life forms on the earth. If the early computers were even that intelligent, it was already a remarkable state of affairs.