Lucius Flatley, the well-known raconteur, recently suggested to his coffee klatch that machines should have a constitutional right to free speech. He based his proposal on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals.

In today’s world, we have delegated many of our daily decisions to computers. At the office, Microsoft Word improves misspellings. At home, Facebook recommends new friends – and the PC decides what shows the kids shouldn’t see. Recommendations made by Amazon sell a lot of books. On a drive to see asparagus grow in Aroostook county or to find a Republican in Saco, a GPS device selects the best route. When computers make choices, they are “speaking.”

Algorithms already dictate over 90 percent of stock trades in the United States and increasingly make decisions on subjects too complex for human grasp, such as traffic flows on converging highways and aircraft flight traffic. They even make life and death choices for a few bad guys squatting beside their camels somewhere in Islamistan.

Flatley’s reasoning was linear. If corporation money – whether from a bird-watching club in Cape Elizabeth or from Bain Capital – is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it follows that corporations must also have the right to vote or to breast feed in public. Can free speech for computers be far behind?

The argument that machines function as individuals was formally made some time ago when Google commissioned a law professor to draft an argument that “Google and other search engines are speakers.” To a non-lawyer, that may sound bizarre, but there is logic. Google is little different from politicians. Both have a collection of prepared answers and, when questioned, only have to decide which to select. Remember, in 2008 Sarah Palin survived 90 minutes of vice presidential debate with 24 memorized answers.

It may be argued that the First Amendment is basic to all other freedoms – a foundation for the structure of democracy. Why deny freedom to a machine that can defeat the world chess champion?

Computers make trillions of decisions each day. It is only a matter of time before computers argue they, too, have the right to ignore privacy or antitrust laws. If the Supreme Court can decide corporations are people, the next step of giving free speech to computers seems justified

But, from the depths of the coffee urn, Banquo’s ghost asked in a faint rumble, “Aren’t machines and corporations primarily concerned with their designer’s interests? Don’t they lack a concern for the common good so vital to democracy?”

No one answered.

In a backward way, the NRA seems to support computer speech. By claiming that Google slandered guns when citing statistics of gun carnage, they implied that machines had opinions. Slander requires opinion. With the NRA gun lobby on their side – however inadvertently – can free speech by machines be far behind?

Exxon for president!

Information you can use

• The first algorithm was conceived by Abu Abdullah ibn Musa al-khwarizmi a 9th-century Persian (Iranian) Muslim mathematician.

• After feeding on blood containing alcohol, the average bedbug lays 12 eggs. After feeding on “clean” blood it lays 44 eggs.

• In 2010, 15 private citizens were killed by terrorist attacks; 16 were killed by falling televisions.

• Wine is better than milk for building strong bones in older women.

• U.S. service members are now permitted to march in gay parades – in uniform.

• Two out of three Republicans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion.

Rodney Quinn, who died Oct. 27, wrote several columns in advance for publication, which the newspaper will print through the coming weeks.

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