| Chapter 5: The Quality of Emergence |
| Instructions for this Report |
In chapter 5 of Sherry Turkles book, Life on the
Screen, she speaks of the relationship or correlation between a computer
and a human brain. She shows examples of how they can be considered
the same, and how they are obviously different. The emergence of
this argument stems from groups that considered artificial intelligence
(AI) entirely formal and logical. Looking at the computers memory
in physical terms, studies of memory and inner states started with humans,
thus developing cognitive psychology.
The artificial intelligence in a computer
follows a certain set of rules. This brought up the first problem in trying
to say that computers and human brains are the same. Human brains
do not work on a set of rules but learn from experience. One person,
Lady Ada Lovelace said this about computers," computers do what you tell
them to do, nothing more, nothing less." This brings up the
point that computers cannot think on their own. Humans gain knowledge
from being in the world and learning through experience. The main
difference about human brains and computers in the physical difference.
Human brains are biological and computers aren't. Being biologically
alive makes the human brain special and they knowledge gained can
be wider than something that has ceilings on the learning variety.
The chapter sprung new ideas of how similar the
human brain and computer are. There are obvious differences between
humans and computers, but when we look at the underlying structure of both,
the similarities seem to pile up.
| Class Comments |
This brought up interesting ideas about how each medium works and how related they are. Our class talked about the set of rules for computers and that we are different because humans don't have them. One person brought up the idea that humans do work on rules too. We translated it into human morals. On the other side, humans also have a set of rules for learning. Learning practices such as association and operant instill learned things in humans from rules noted to plant the learned thing. This chapter opened up my mind to the possibilities of humans tapping their whole memory as computers do to make humans more efficient with their biological brain that is hardly used.
