Regarding the "Chinese room":

Given the other allusions in his message, I suspect he was refering to the Chinese Room experiment of John Searl. John Searl is a philosopher who believes not only that computers can't think now, but that they won't ever think in the future. And his chinese room gedankenexperiment is intended to demonstrate this.

(Of course, I disagree with John Searl, but that's irrelevant.)

k