WON_der
John Young
jya at pipeline.com
Tue Jul 16 10:27:54 PDT 1996
6-15-96. NYP, Book review:
AFTER THOUGHT
The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence
By James Bailey
Illustrated. 277 pages Basic Books/HarperCollins. $25.
ISBN 0-465-00781-3
Mr. Bailey, a former senior manager at the Thinking
Machines Corporation, foresees an "electronic computing
revolution" whose "intellectual impact will be greater than
anything since the Renaissance, possibly greater than
anything since the invention of language." In his view, the
greatest challenge posed by the computer revolution will be
for humans to trust processes of thinking they won't
necessarily understand, such as neural networks spotting
patterns without supplying proof "in any human-absorbable
form."
His main point is that we must become aware of the outmoded
abstractions on which our sequential thinking is based and
to jettison them in favor of parallel processes. He cites
Alfred North Whitehead: "A civilization which cannot burst
through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility
after a very limited burst of progress." The wonder of Mr.
Bailey's book is that he makes us aware of things abstract
that all our lives we have been trained to think of as
concrete.
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http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/wonder.txt (7 kb)
WON_der
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