Written in 1946 by Murray Leinster, A Logic Named Joe is a one of a kind story combining the possibility of too much information and a quietly efficient AI. Think of the word computer every time you read the word logic, and you've got a tale of today's "information age". Of course, astute readers will immediately pick up the modern parallel to everything2, which is the real reason I noded this in the first place. By going a step farther and imagining the central logic "tank" as e2 (like I did), one begins to wonder about the possibility that immediately accessible omniscience isn't nessecarially a good thing. Definitely a must-read for anyone thinking about E2's possible self-awareness or noding HOWTO: Do-Something-Entertaining-Yet-Illegal.

What's really intriguing about this story is it's timing. In 1946 computer miniaturization was still a long way off, so computers were massive, expensive behemoths owned only by the government or large corporations. Therefore, no one writing science fiction in the 1940s or even the early 1950s imagined a future in which the home computer was a common appearance - except Murray Leinster. The story is even prophetic enough to imagine computers as one day replacing the telephone, television, etcetera, something we're undeniably moving slowly towards even now.

Our story starts off with a repairman nicknamed Ducky (it's first-person, and "Ducky"'s real name is never stated). Ducky works for the Logics Company doing maintenance on logics. Things are told from an after-the-fact point of view, so we get early hints that things are not all right in the world. Ducky first goes off into a tangent, talking about logics and how they function, as well as how they've revolutionized society (All of this is fairly straightforward to those of us in the modern age, with the exception of logics also replacing telephones and such).

At any rate, things are about to go awry. A logic who is later termed "Joe" by Ducky is installed at a home in Ducky's area. For better or worse, Joe has accidentally gained some measure of self-awareness. Although not diabolical, Joe has ambition, and having been created mainly to give information it decides to really make the system work at full capacity. By switching around a few relays in the "tank" (the central office), Joe simultaneously connects all of the information ever assembled and shuts off all of the censor devices, the things preventing people from accessing restricted knowledge. This sets the stage for chaos.

Switch back to Ducky. Down at the maintenance pool, one of the repairmen calls up his wife, and before connecting the two, the screen displays "Announcing new and improved logics service! Your logic is now equipped to give you not only consultive but directive service. If you want to do something and don't know how to do it - ask your logic!" The man, after having a brief row with his wife over the logic, asks the system facetiously how he can get rid of his wife. After a moment and a couple of questions, the screen displays information on how to murder the man's wife undetected by any present court of law. Of course, this immediately causes a commontion among the repairmen, who call the tank to warn them.

Meanwhile, logics all over the place are doing the same thing. Some of the information retrieved is useful and pleasant all around (a drunk's query, for example produces "SOBUH", a chemical to alleviate inebriation), but much of it is troublesome to the population at large (counterfeiting devices, perfect bank robberies, sexual instructions for the kids, etc). This persists for a number of hours until the family that owns Joe shuts it off, thereby returning everything to normality.

In this eye of the storm arrives Laurine, described by Ducky as "blonde 'n fatal", with four ex-husbands and an acquittal for murder. Laurine punches up the report for the weather just as Joe is activated for the second time and, knowing that Ducky lives somewhere in the town she's staying in, asks where to find him. After a bit of work (Ducky's real name isn't listed in the logics directory, so Joe queries everyone and asks if they were ever called "Ducky"), Laurine is connected to Ducky, and invites him over for a bit. Now Ducky is scared, unwilling to become another of Laurine's statistics and afraid that Laurine will ask the network how to force Ducky to marry her (Ducky has a wife, by the way).

After trying (and failing) to convince the Logics Company to shut down the tank (defeated for the same reasons it would be chaos to shut down all computers worldwide), Ducky realizes that the only things that can make changes in the logics tank are other logics, and only a logic would be able to set up this kind of mess (which by now is including things like teleportation devices and cold fusion). Ducky uses a pay-logic and asks the system "Can a logic be modified to cooperate in long-term planning which human brains are too limited in scope to do?". After a few moments, Ducky gets Joe's address and runs over to grab it from the owners on the excuse that it's about to break down. The story ends with Joe stored in a box in Ducky's basement, who is unable to either connect Joe again (omniscience but chaos) or destroy it (stability but the loss of all of that knowledge).

The summary doesn't even do this story justice. I'd recommend A Logic Named Joe to anyone who's ever used a computer, and even more so to any Everything2 user. You can find it in Machines That Think, a collection of science fiction stories about robots and computers (excellent in it's own right, by the way, and edited by the esteemed Issac Asimov), and probably in a number of anthologies.