GORILLA MY DREAMS

DESIGNING AN APE'S COMPUTER POSES UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES

For her recent birthday, Koko the lowland gorilla asked for a voice. Because
Koko is no ordinary gorilla, her wish will soon be granted, though fulfilling it
took much more time, effort, and ingenuity than expected.

Koko signs at least 600 words in American Sign Language (ASL) and understands
more than 1,000 spoken words. Everyone around her talks all the time, and her
inability to make human sounds frustrates her.

Fortunately, Koko sits on the advisory board of Apple Computer's Vivarium
Program, an ambitious effort to understand the nature of intelligence. Several
Apple scientists agreed to design a special Macintosh, complete with voice, for
Koko,

A daunting task lay before them: designing a computer that is safe for a gorilla
as well as safe from a gorilla. During her excited moments, 260-pound Koko
careers about her room at 20 miles an hour and exerts about 2,000 pounds of
concentrated force, the equivalent of a ten-pound shot traveling at 100 miles an
hour.

Before beginning work, the Apple computer scientists met with Koko to tell her
about the project and to help her pick out a voice. As might be expected when
talking with a gorilla who not only understands human speech but also continues
the conversation, a few misunderstandings occurred. For example, software
engineer Larry Yaeger told Koko he and his associates were from Apple. Because
the fruit is her favorite treat, she enthusiastically examined each person's
briefcase or bag, looking for apples.

Earlier, four women had recorded three sentences, which were then digitized into
a HyperCard stack. One of the voices belonged to a woman Koko knew, leading her
to sign, "Me girl know." Asked several times in different ways about an
unfamiliar voice, she declared, "Rotten." She made no negative comments upon
listening to her final choice and several times signed self-referentially,
"Gorilla myself good."

Designing a computer to house Koko's new voice proved more difficult. To absorb
the gorilla's strength, hardware engineer Tom Ferrara used solid aluminum for
the inner structure and a polycarbonate sheet for the cover. The unit sits just
29 inches above the floor (to which it's bolted), a comfortable height for a
gorilla who hunkers on the ground. The designers placed the ventilation slots
in the rear to direct foreign materials that Koko might deposit, such as bananas
or toys, away from the CPU, which has eight megabytes of memory and a 40megabyte
hard disk.

After testing HyperCard and SuperCard, Yaeger set out to write a special
interface, called Lingo, for Koko. Seventy uniformly shaped and spaced buttons,
each with a full-color picture adapted from an ASL gesture, cover the screen.
Touching an icon activates the corresponding word stored in memory. As Koko
chooses words, they accumulate in a large bar at the top of the screen, and when
she touches it, the whole sentence plays. If she wishes, however, the words can
be heard immediately.

The touch screen remains a stumbling block to the Apple designers. Working with
MicroTouch Systems, mechanical engineer Mike Clark produced several optically
bonded capacitive screens, but Koko inadvertently scratched them all. Gorillas
walk on their knuckles, grinding grit deeply into their skin. When she touches
the screen "it's like grinding the bottom of your shoe across the screen," says
Ron Cohn of the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California, one of Koko's
teachers. MicroTouch has developed a new optical guard coating that should do
the trick.