In this essay, Borges describes a novel that can be read in multiple ways - a hypertext novel - before computers were even invented. Although Borges never actually wrote a hypertext novel, the first was written by Julio Cortazar in 1963. A theme in Borges ideas is that time is embraced with many possibilities, that infinite futures exist. Borges even describes a feeling of ghosts of himself in different positions than he is actually standing, emphasizing the opportunities he has chosen against in life, which would have led him to those positions and decisions rather than the place he is inhabiting. The Garden of Forking Paths was a precursor for many technological advances. I found this essay to be interesting because it gives me a feeling of technology that is warmer, based in folklore, than the history I have come to know.
02. As We May Think by Vannevar Bush
In this article, we are introduced to the "memex," an imaginary mechanized private file and library intended to organize the knowledge of its user and make it available to him at any time. Bush is, through coming up with these kinds of ideas, pushing for the development of technology that could be used for understanding and the "explosion of knowledge" rather than the destruction that he contributed to through his organization of the Manhattan Project, producing bombs that were used in the Cold War. Bush imagines the "memex" as a machine that contains many microfilms, holding information and photographs in the smallest of spaces. Images and text can be called upon and connected to create associative "trails" of knowledge. Bush's descriptions remind me of technologies that exist today, such as the Amazon Kindle and Wikipedia. He was obviously very far ahead of his time in conceptualizing these kinds of technological advances.
03. Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing
Turing asks the question, "Can Machines Think?" and proceeds to set up a hypothetical experiment to prove this to be true. He decides to use a question and answer method to try and let a digital computer imitate a human. Comparisons between the human nervous system and digital computers are based in the fact that they are both electric. Turing eventually changes his question to the more fathomable, "Are there imaginable computers which would do well in the imitation game?" He suggests that in fifty years computers will exist which can fool the interrogator 70% of the time. This essay was written in 1950 and already in 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum's "Eliza," a conversational computer program, was fooling people into thinking that it was a real person. Turing illuminates several objections to his question before launching into an interesting comparison of the human mind and a computer. The child at birth, is mirrored to the "child program" or the beginning computer. The education of a human child to adulthood is called, for the computer, the "education process," and includes progress through programming and through positive and negative feedback from a "teacher." In conclusion, Turing never proves or disproves his theory, but suggests that it will be able to be proven and experimented with in years to come when computers have larger storage space.
04. Men, Machines, and the World About by Norbert Wiener
Wiener's essay was interesting to me because of its focus on scientists being engaged with the social outcomes of their work. Wiener also discusses "automatic control," a system, through which machines can be used to work in dangerous industries rather than risking human lives. The industrial revolution that Wiener describes is based mainly in "replacing human judgement and discrimination at low levels by the discrimination of the machine." This replacement, is not, as originally thought, about power but actually about communication. Wiener finally preaches about the danger the human race faces in giving technology too much importance. He fears that once we give machines this much of a place in our lives, we will never be able to rid ourselves of them. Wiener was right; with each new machine I buy, whether it be an iPod or a new computer, a mere week after its purchase, I cannot imagine how I survived without it.
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