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Edge: ELIZA'S WORLD - the computer re-codes the self

Do we lose touch with reality when computers take over that reality?

Tags: montpelerin, self on 2008-06-03 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The machine's influence shapes not only society's structures but the more intimate structures of the self. Under the sway of the ubiquitous, "indispensable" computer, we begin to take on its characteristics, to see the world, and ourselves, in the computer's (and its programmers') terms.
computers have the power to sustain megalomaniac fantasies.
His own invention, Eliza, revealed to Weizenbaum the ease with which we will embrace a fabricated world. He spent the rest of his life trying to warn us away from the seductions of Eliza and her many friends. The quest may have been quixotic, but there was something heroic about it too.
if you believe in computers too much, you lose touch with
reality. That’s the real danger of the magic dust so liberally sprinkled by
the mainstream. We pass this fallacy from the lab out into the world. This
is what apparently happened to Wall Street traders in fomenting a series of massive financial
failures. Computers can be used rather too easily to improve the efficiency
with which we lie to ourselves. This is the side of Weizenbaum that I wish
was better known.
worried that in trying to make thinking machines, we would become machines ourselves.
Printing, writing, and the alphabet did in fact bend the culture to favor themselves. They also made themselves so indispensable that we cannot imagine culture and society without them. Who would deny that our culture is unrecognizable without writing? And, as Weizenbaum indicated, the new embedded technology tends to displace the former mindset. Orality is gone, and our bookish culture is often at odds with oral cultures.
There may indeed be reasons to worry about AI, but the fact that AI and computers tend to be pervasive, indispensable, foundational, self-reinforcing, and irreversible are not reasons alone to worry. Rather, if the past history of printing and writing is any indication, they are reasons to celebrate. With the advent of ubiquitous computation we are about to undergo another overhaul of our identity.

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tony curzon price's Bookmarks tagged self → View Popular

Edge: ELIZA'S WORLD - the computer re-codes the self

tony curzon price's Related Tags

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Related Groups on Diigo

self-improve,happiness life

You Can Self Publish

Goji berries .us prides it self on carrying the highest quality Goji Berries and other liquid health products on the market.

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