Idea Apples

Time for a not-really thought experiment! What I want you to do is go over to your refrigerator, fruit bowl, local shop-and-save, backyard tree or produce box and get an apple. I don’t really care if you don’t like apples, or even if apples, for some bizarre reason, give you hives or a rash. Admire your apple for a moment. Is it a lovely new shiny apple? Is it large or small—a red delicious or a crabapple? Is it dented? How long ago was it separated from its parent tree? Is it a girl apple or a boy apple?

Okay, okay, enough aesthetic appreciation. The point is, even though this apple is shiny and red, the apple you brought for lunch today might have been bruised and dented from bumping around in your bag. What makes them both apples? Well, that would be the genetic make-up. What makes you recognize them both as apples? How many apples have you seen in your lifetime? How many do you have to see before you recognize an apple as an apple?

This is a concept known more or less as an idea apple, and it works for faces too. This is what allows people to recognize faces as faces and why computers have to be taught. The computers have to have an idea face programmed into them.

So, enough with computers and apples for a moment—they wouldn’t have mixed were it not for April 1, 1976, when Apple Computer Inc. premiered—take a bite of your apple. Think about it: you’re biting into all the apples you’ve ever eaten. Now look at it: you’re looking at all the apples you’ve ever eaten. Kind of funny, isn’t it, to think of all those apples streaming out behind you at that bite.