Wednesday, October 7, 2009

New Media Reader: Ch. 2-3

Chronology:
  • 1945: Vannevar Bush publishes "As we May Think"
  • 1950: Alan Turing publishes "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
Summary:
  • The new power of the military-industrial complex is staggering. However, what will all those academics and scientists devoted to the cause of war do once peace arrives?
  • The future holds the minimizing of the size of all technology while at the same time upping the ease of use and quality.
  • Bush predicted many of the machines and contraptions of the future that were supposed to make our lives easier.
  • Turing sets out to define what is "intelligence" and how a computer can acquire what humans would define as "intelligence"
  • Turing predicted many of the problems and inventions that computing would develop 50 years down the road. (processing power, storage)
  • He then tackles his opponents of his own question of "could machines think" answering retorts like the dreadful consequences of thinking machines or the mathematical impossibility of a thinking machine.

(I'm happy the British government finally issued an apology for their abuse of Turing)

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