Pygmalion à l’ère de la virtualité : apprendre avec la machine

Galatea 2.2, Richard Powers' fifth novel, is a scientific fiction. Most of the action takes place in a computer laboratory where the protagonists, a computer scientist and a writer, are working together in order to perfect a computer with an immense knowledge of literature, and capable of analyzing literary texts. Powers updates one of the central myths of occidental literature : the creation of an artificial being, capable of thinking as a human being does, and arousing both hopes and fears in its observers. The novel ultimately questions the boundaries between what Charles Percy Snow has called the "two cultures" (i.e. science and the humanities).Chassay Jean-François. Pygmalion à l’ère de la virtualité : apprendre avec la machine. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°76, mars 1998. L'Amérique entre science et fiction. pp. 73-83