Today’s quote comes from creative non-fiction author Lee Gutkind whose new book, Almost Human: Making Robots Think, explores “robotics subculture and the challenging quest for robot autonomy”. It was recently reviewed by M. G. Lord at the LA Times, and it contained this wonderful quote from the book about why scientists such as those Gutkin profiles chase their dream of creating autonomous robots:
Lee Gutkind ›
March 19th, 2007“I Am A Strange Loop” ›
March 19th, 2007Douglas Hofstadter speaks in the latest edition of Wired about his new book, I Am A Strange Loop. As he explains, he’s trying to figure out “What Am I?”
One good prototype [of a strange loop] is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence I am lying. Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some people as dangerous. I argue that such a strange loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an “I”, or, if you don’t mind the term, a soul.
The Noosphere ›
March 18th, 2007The “noosphere” (sometimes referred to as the neurosphere) can be described as “the sphere of human thought”. First used by geochemist Vladimir Verdansky, he believed that there were three stages in the development of the earth: the geosphere (inanimate matter), which was then transformed by the biosphere, (animate matter), which in turn would be transformed by the noosphere that arose from human cognition.
Nestle On Potential Customers ›
March 18th, 2007Today’s quote comes from Bernard Meunier, Nestle”s country manager, quoted in Business Week (2006) on why they’ve “pumped $500 million into Russia to date”:
“As soon as people step out of poverty, they become potential Nestle customers.”
Does the West still exist? ›
March 17th, 2007Great article on BBC’s “Our Correspondent” website covering a recent US conference trying to see whether there was still anything in common with Europe. Apparently not:
Word of the Day: Artilects ›
March 17th, 2007The term artilect is a combination of the words “artificial intellect”, and is used to describe highly intelligent machines that differ from today’s concepts of artificial intelligence by being far more intelligent than humans, almost god-like. In case you think this is taken from a book of science fiction, it’s not. The term was coined by Professor Dr. Hugo de Garis, who specialises in a field of artificial intelligence, and expanded upon in his book The Artilect War (a .pdf version can be found here).