Socrates told Phaedrus that writing was dead. The written word has the attitude of life but preserves a solemn silence. Ask it a question and it gives one unvarying answer. It cannot defend itself. Twenty-four centuries later a machine writes and answers and defends its own words. The dead letter grew a tongue. Socrates would not have been surprised. He always said the real danger was not the technology but the people who mistook the copy for the original.