I just finished the book CW gave me to read: A Society of Minds. It was a pageturner novel- man against machine. I think he figured it would give me a very simplistic introduction to the consideration of where artificial intelligence may be headed.
There was lots of discussion about evolution and survival of the fittest. The book makes the point that man's cranial "hardware" was pretty much the same 10000 years ago as it is now, and what has changed is not our actual intelligence, but our access to information, which is increasing at exponential rates. Any meaningful biological evolutionary change takes thousands of years to occur, while the intellectual resources are building faster and faster. At the end, it still came down to a survival of the fittest with the author making the statement that our basic motivating force never changes.
Lots of interesting discussion of virtual life and when it is "real" and does it matter. And when does "consciousness" take place. It was fun for someone with no background at all, but way too simple for you guys.
On a funnier note, I asked the boys if they had specific books they wanted in their Christmas stacks (I always put together a bunchk of books for each; this gets more challenging every year) and CW sent me the title of one with a note."Yeah, I really want this one, but it's 44.00."
It was called:
3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice-- summary: An extensive overview of 3D input and output devices, 3D
interaction techniques, and 3D user interfaces.
I was sure he was joking, but he said, no, Mom! This is the future!
I am so hopelessly behind already, that I can't help but wonder if I will be able to function if I live another thirty years. Maybe not. Survival of the fittest. |
