CRITICAL PROGRAMMING: Toward A Philosophy Of Computing

Chapter 1 Introduction{11}

1.1 from automated genocide to the dumbest generation{11}

1.2 a collective intelligence problem, societies of control, the quintessential postmodern object, foss hopes, default philosophies of computing{11}

1.3 not to use old tools for new problems, scholarship requires a cybersage, digital humanities projects, critical programming studies, plan of the dissertation{11}

schedule

Chapter 2 Situation post-postmodern network dividual cyborg{11}

2.1 modernism and postmodernism, regressive subjectivity, Heideggers America, inventing the posthuman{11}

2.2 cybernetics, embodiment, techno-capitalist networks, dividual cyborg, cybersage{11}

Chapter 3 Theoretical framework and methodology{11}

3.1 critical theory, textuality studies, media studies, philosophy of technology{11}

3.2 social construction of technology, ensoniment, histories of computing networking and software, psycho-social studies of computer programmers{11}

3.3 software studies, game studies, code space, critical code studies{11}

3.4 platform studies, diachrony in synchrony, technogenesis and synaptogenesis, cyborg revisited{11}

Chapter 4 Philosophical programmers{11}

4.1 system engineers pioneers of babelization, distribued network visionaries, the new ontologists{11}

4.2 application developers beyond hard mastery and bricolage, auto-ethnographers of coding places{11}

Chapter 5 Critical programming studies{11}

5.1 working code places{11}

5.2 programming philosophers{11}

5.3 symposia, ensoniment{11}

5.4 tapoc, flossification{11}

5.5 pmrek, machine embodiment{11}

Chapter 6 Conclusion{11}

6.1 recommendations{11}

6.2 future directions{11}

Works Cited


1.1 from automated genocide to the dumbest generation

TOC 1.1 from automated genocide to the dumbest generation+

1.2 a collective intelligence problem, societies of control, the quintessential postmodern object, foss hopes, default philosophies of computing

TOC 1.2 a collective intelligence problem, societies of control, the quintessential postmodern object, foss hopes, default philosophies of computing+

1.3 not to use old tools for new problems, scholarship requires a cybersage, digital humanities projects, critical programming studies, plan of the dissertation

schedule

2.1 modernism and postmodernism, regressive subjectivity, Heideggers America, inventing the posthuman

TOC 2.1 modernism and postmodernism, regressive subjectivity, Heideggers America, inventing the posthuman+

2.2 cybernetics, embodiment, techno-capitalist networks, dividual cyborg, cybersage

3.1 critical theory, textuality studies, media studies, philosophy of technology

TOC 3.1 critical theory, textuality studies, media studies, philosophy of technology+

3.2 social construction of technology, ensoniment, histories of computing networking and software, psycho-social studies of computer programmers

TOC 3.2 social construction of technology, ensoniment, histories of computing networking and software, psycho-social studies of computer programmers+

3.3 software studies, game studies, code space, critical code studies

TOC 3.3 software studies, game studies, code space, critical code studies+

3.4 platform studies, diachrony in synchrony, technogenesis and synaptogenesis, cyborg revisited

4.1 system engineers pioneers of babelization, distribued network visionaries, the new ontologists

TOC 4.1 system engineers pioneers of babelization, distribued network visionaries, the new ontologists+

4.2 application developers beyond hard mastery and bricolage, auto-ethnographers of coding places

--4.2.1+++ {11}

4 2 1 (+) [-7+]mCQK edwards-closed_world (169-170) 20130830a 0 -5+ progress/2013/08/notes_for_edwards-closed_world.html
Jacky on computer languages encouraging programming styles reflecting subject positions. (169-170) Computer scientist Jonathan Jacky has observed that each computer language tends to encourage a particular programming style, as do subcultures associated with each one. . . . The ongoing invention and spread of new computer languages is a symptom of the search not only for convenience of interaction, but for styles of thinking subject positions congenial to different kinds of users and their projects.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (1) 20131002 0 -11+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Inspiration of Microsoft Press publisher noting lack of in depth, personal studies of programmers. (1) The idea for this series of interviews with notable programmers of our time originated with Min S. Yee, the publisher of Microsoft Press. . . . He noticed parallels between the work of the writer and that of the programmers. . . . When Yee looked in bookstores, he discovered innumerable how to books about programming, but a dearth of information that presented the experiences, approaches, and philosophies of software designers in a personal, in-depth manner. So Microsoft Press decided to look into the minds and personalities behind the software.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (2) 20131002d 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Programming style glimpsed when thoughts written down: back to Turkle, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and cultural studies. (2) In addition, we asked each programmer to provide us with samples of his work either a piece of code, a program, some sketches or doodles of program designs to provide our readers with a glimpse of the programmerƒs style when he puts his thoughts down on paper.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (19) 20131002q 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: sees no major changes in programming practices ever. (19) I donƒt know that the sixth or the thirty-second generation will do something really drastically different or that great.
(19) I have always worried that when these claimed incredible new benefits come, we will lose all the old ones. The it becomes a kind of trade-off situation where you have to see if you are better off.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (38) 20131002x 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Lampson: programming as giving computer instructions, which is equivocable to using spreadsheets and other cultural software, versus creative programming. (38) If programming just means giving the computer instructions, I think everybody will do that at some level. Most business people operate a spreadsheet and thatƒs programming in some sense. I think youƒll see more of that. Creative programming is another matter.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (83) 20131003e 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Gates: hermeneutic code study reveals competency. (83) I still think that one of the finest tests of programming ability is to had the programmer about 30 pages of code and see how quickly he can read through and understand it.
(83) If you ever talk to a great programmer, youƒll find he knows his tools like an artist knows his paintbrushes. Itƒs amazing to see how much great programmers have in common in the way they developed how they got their feedback, and how they developed such a refined sense of discipline about whatƒs sloppy and whatƒs not sloppy.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (132) 20131003k 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Bricklin: style of cultivating a garden of software that meets his needs; laying out data structure and human interface. (132)
As Bricklin says, his intent is not to run a ranch or tend a farm, but to cultivate a garden of software, just like a garden in the backyard; one that is sufficient to meet his needs and from which he can gain pleasure and satisfaction.
(139) To me, the most important part of a program is laying out the data structure. You also have to know what the human interface is going to be like.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (667) 20131019d 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Object-oriented representation essential to fit user conceptual model of virtual world; interactions based on functional models. (667) the basic objects from which you build the system should correspond more or less to the objects in the userƒs conceptual model of the virtual world, that is, people, places, and artifacts.
(667) The description of a place in a virtual world should be in terms of what is there rather than what it looks like. Interactions between objects should be described by functional models rather than by physical ones.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (667-668) 20131019e 0 -6+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Define cyberspace in terms of configuration and behavior of objects abstracts implementation tied to specific, fleeting technologies. (667-668) The presentation level and the conceptual level cannot (and should not) be
totally isolated from each other. However, defining a cyberspace in terms of the configuration and behavior of objects, rather than their presentation, enables us to span a vast range of computational and display capabilities among the participants in a system. . . . this approach covers the ground between systems already obsolete and ones that are as yet gleams in their designersƒ eyes.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (671) 20131019j 0 -2+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Game designer versus cruise director on ocean voyage. (671) We were to be like the cruise director on an ocean voyage, but it turned out we were still thinking like game designers.
(671) Again and again we found that activities based on often unconscious assumptions about player behavior had completely unexpected outcomes (when they were not simply outright failures).

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (673) 20131019n 0 -8+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Delving into internals such as by disassembling machine code allows players to develop cheats and affordances beyond coming to understand overt procedural rhetorics. (673) If, however, a computer game involves multiple players, then delving into the programƒs internals can enable one to truly cheat, in the sense that one gains an unfair advantage over the other players, an advantage moreover of which they may be unaware. Habitat is such a multiplayer game. When we were designing the software, our prime directive was The backend shall not assume the validity of anything a player computer tells it. . . . Would anyone go to the trouble of disassembling and studying 100K or so of incredibly tight and bizarrely threaded 6502 machine code just to tinker? As it turns out, the answer is yes.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (676) 20131019q 0 -4+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Managing cyberspace unlike single-user application or conventional online service; more like governing a nation, leading to agoric evolutionary approach rather than centralized socialistic one, as if liberalism through natural selection (Malabou). (676) managing a cyberspace world is not like managing the world inside a single-user application or even a conventional online service. Instead, it is more like governing an actual nation. Cyberspace architects will benefit from study of the principles of sociology and economics as much as from the principles of computer science. We advocate an
agoric, evolutionary approach to world building rather than a centralized, socialistic one.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (363) 20131019h 0 -5+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Experiment of outputing problem specification after inputing physical description through recognition. (363) A typical exercise in computer-aided design is the generation of two- three-dimensional layouts from a set of well-specified constraints and criteria. . . . This section considers an experiment that seeks to do the reverse: input of a physical description (through recognition rather than specification) and output of problem specification.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (47) 20131009g 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Managers supervise and solve well-structured and ill-structured problems; prediction that middle management activities will be completely automated and the workforce diminished. (47) Managers are largely concerned with supervising, with solving well-structured problems, and with solving ill-structured problems.
(47) But there is reason to believe that the kinds of activities that now characterize middle management will be more completely automated than the others, and hence will come to have a somewhat smaller part in the whole management picture.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (99-100) 20131009u 0 -4+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Need for hierarchy in complex systems: appear in evolutionary processes and require less information transmission among their parts. (99-100) 1.
Among possible systems of a given size and complexity, hierarchical systems, composed of subsystems, are the most likely to appear through evolutionary processes.
(100) 2.
Among systems of a given size and complexity, hierarchical systems require much less information transmission among their parts than do other types of systems.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (ix) 20130709 0 -3+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
Computer as metaphor to understand the human. (ix) But a major point of this book is precisely that we, all of us, have made the world too much into a computer, and that this remaking of the world in the image of the computer started long before there were any electronic computers. Now that we have computers, it becomes somewhat easier to see this imaginative transformation we have worked on the world. Now we can use the computer itself that is the idea of the computer as a metaphor to help us understand what we have done and are doing.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (41) 20130711 0 -1+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
New paradigm of machines as information transmitters rather than motion transmitters. (41) The arrival of all sorts of electronic machines, especially of the electronic computer, has changed our image of the machine from that of a transducer and transmitter of
power to that of a transformer of information.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (96) 20130711b 0 -5+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
Importance of conditional branching for autonomous behavior. (96) The ability of computers to execute conditional-branch instructions i.e., to modify the flow of control of their programs as a function of the outcome of tests on intermediate results of their own computations is one of their most crucial properties, for every effective procedure can be reduced to a series of nothing but commands (i.e., statements of the form do this and do that ) interlaced with conditional-branch instructions.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (242-244) 20131010i 0 -22+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
Allusion to goal of automatic programming, ease of use, and trustworthiness in unnamed university planning paper. (242-244) [quoting unnamed planning paper by director of major university computer laboratory] The importance of the role stems, as has been noted, from the fact that the computer has been incorporating itself, and will surely continue to incorporate itself, into most of the functions that are fundamental to the support, protection, and development of our society. Even now, there is no turning back, and in a few years it will be clear that we are as vitally dependent upon the informational processing of our computers as upon the growth of grain in the field and the flow of fuel from the well. . . . Nevertheless, debugging should be in the focus of the research effort undertaken to master programming. The reason is that research on debugging will yield insight into many problems in the formulation and expression of human intention. . . . Once we understand human intentions, itself a technical problem, all else is technique. . . . Eventually, if the effort is successful, the model becomes the automatic programmer. . . . The convergence of direction . . . involves making computers not only easy to use but, as has been stressed here, trustworthy.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK winograd-thinking_machines (207) 20131019f 0 -1+ progress/2011/02/notes_for_winograd-thinking_machines.html
Belief in emergent intelligence from computational interactions; agents as subroutines slips to society of homunculi. (207) With a simple might indeed become versatile, we have slipped from a technically feasible but limited notion of agents as subroutines to an impressionistic description of a society of homunculi, conversing with one another in ordinary language.

4 2 1 (+) [-6+]mCQK winograd-thinking_machines (217) 20131019p 0 -1+ progress/2011/02/notes_for_winograd-thinking_machines.html
Insights of hermeneutic constructivism are that people create world through language, which is always interpreted in tacitly understood background. (217) Two guiding principles emerge: (1)
people create their world through language; and (2) language is always interpreted in a tacitly understood background.

4 2 1 (+) [-5+]mCQK turkle-inner_history_of_devices (133-34) 20130909 0 -10+ progress/2010/08/notes_for_turkle-inner_history_of_devices.html
Weizenbaum identifying category of compulsive programmers. (133-34) In 1976, MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum warned about an emerging category of compulsive programmers. . . . Weizenbaum sees this pathology as having significant similarities to compulsive gambling. Each has the driving force of megalomaniac fantasies of omnipotence. . . . Or, as Andrew Ross argues, hackers like dropout students of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s were the 1980sƒ public example of moral maladjustment.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xvii-xviii) 20140913 0 -14+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Posthumous project of artificial intelligence based on cleverness of human intelligence programmed and built into machines; living writing. (xvii-xviii) At the moment, I am trying to get another project under way, which will obviously be posthumous, the first steps of which will consist in addiing to the morphological encoding of each single separate word of the Thomistic lexicon (in all there are 150,000, including all the particles, such as et, non, etc.), the codes that express its syntax (i.e., its direct elementary syntactic correlations) within each single phrase in which it occurs. This project is called Lessico Tomistico Biculturale (LTB). Only a computer census of the syntactic correlations can document what concepts the author wanted to express with that word. Of a list of syntactic correlations, the conceptual translation can thus be given in modern languages. . . . To give one example, in the mind of St. Thomas ratio seminalis meant then what today we call genetic programming. Obviously, St. Thomas did not know of either DNA or genes, because at the time microscopes did not exist, but he had well understood that something had to perform their functions.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xvii-xviii) 20140913b 0 -14+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
The project Busa describes imagines and instantiates forms of that the ancients called, imagining test by LTB apparatus, living writing. (xvii-xviii) At the moment, I am trying to get another project under way, which will obviously be posthumous, the first steps of which will consist in addiing to the morphological encoding of each single separate word of the Thomistic lexicon (in all there are 150,000, including all the particles, such as et, non, etc.), the codes that express its syntax (i.e., its direct elementary syntactic correlations) within each single phrase in which it occurs. This project is called Lessico Tomistico Biculturale (LTB). Only a computer census of the syntactic correlations can document what concepts the author wanted to express with that word. Of a list of syntactic correlations, the conceptual translation can thus be given in modern languages. . . . To give one example, in the mind of St. Thomas ratio seminalis meant then what today we call genetic programming. Obviously, St. Thomas did not know of either DNA or genes, because at the time microscopes did not exist, but he had well understood that something had to perform their functions.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xx) 20140913c 0 -2+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Input as disciplined native language, output various translations leveraging single sourcing. (xx) In input, therefore, everybody could use their own native disciplined language and have the desired translations in output. The addressee could even receive the message both in their own language, in that of the sender, and in others.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xx-xxi) 20140913e 0 -3+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Programs for Latin can be extended to all languages, forming as network effect universal collective language imagined as AntiBabel; notes phonetic script scope does not include ideogram or pictogram based languages, and I wonder if they therefore include procedural machine languages. (xx-xxi) These thoughts have formed gradually in my mind over the years, starting from the realization that my programs for Latin, which I always wanted broken up from monofunctional use, could be applied with the same operative philosophy to more than twenty other languages (all in a phonetic script), even those that do not descend from Latin, such as Arabic and Hebrew, which are written from right to left. I had only to transfer elements from one table to another, changing the length of fields, or adding a field. (However, I cannot say anything about languages written ideograms or pictorgrams.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xviii) 20140914f 0 -7+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Riddles and gaps in the state of the art leading to his ultimate project include mother tongue epistemology, universal language grammar function, and implementation of living writing by operating upon both natural human and machine languages, as well as engineering philosophy problems of generating real virtualities. (xviii) This third sort of informatics was the first to come into being, with the
Index Thomisticus project, in 1949. . . . First, everyone knows how to use his own mother tongue, but no one can know how, i.e., no one can explain the rules and no one can list all the words of the lexicon that he uses (the active lexicon) nor of that which he understands but never uses (the passive lexicon).

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xviii) 20140914l 0 -1+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Alpac Report convinced biopower to suspend hermeneutic informatics; may have snuffed out projects that may have continued cards from Nazi systems. (xviii) Hermeneutic informatics hinges on the Alpac Report (Washington, DC, 1966) and, now, this perspective is perhaps awaiting its own globalization.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xix) 20140914o 0 -3+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Not worth trying to build shows material conditions of code; the surprisingly forgotten fact that cathedral builders and users had limits too. (xix) Unfortunately, in 1966, as a result of the Alpac Report, the Pentagon cut off all funding. This was not because computers at that time did not have sufficient memory capability or speed of access, but precisely because the information on the categories and their linguistic correspondences furnished by the various branches of philology were not sufficient for the purpose. The machine required greater depth and more complex information about our ways of thinking and modes of expression!

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xx) 20140914v 0 -1+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Whether prophecy or utopia a common acknowledgment of humility. (xx) I should like to summarize the formula of a global solution to the linguistic challenge that I presented at the above-mentioned conference at Strasburg, much as if it were my spiritual testament, although I am uncertain whether to call it prophecy or utopia.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xx) 20140914w 0 -4+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
AntiBabel system employs as part what is primary programming method employed by Boltanksi and Chiapello to respond to humanities questioning employing Index Thomisticus algorithms. (xx) I suggest that care of, for example, the European Union for every principal language . . . there should be extracted is integral lexicological system (with the help of the instruments tested in the
Index Thomisticus).

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities (xx) 20140914z 0 -2+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_busa-perspectives_on_digital_humanities.html
Native disciplined language now largely GUI expressions, taking into account forms beyond symbolic. (xx) In input, therefore, everybody could use their own native disciplined language and have the desired translations in output. The addressee could even receive the message both in their own language, in that of the sender, and in others.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK fuller-behind_the_blip (15) 20130921a 0 -10+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_fuller-behind_the_blip.html
Identifies accounts by programmers for insights into understanding software as culture, collected by Lammers and others. (15) Another pre-existing area that offers insights for an understanding of software as culture is the tradition of accounts of their work by programmers.
(15) These accounts of programming are somewhat at odds with the idealist tendencies in computing. . . . But more crucially, they are a direct route to the cultural backbone of classical idealism. . . . Access to and understanding of this beauty is allowed only to those souls that are themselves beautiful.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK golumbia-cultural_logic_of_computation (186) 20130819 0 -3+ progress/2013/08/notes_for_golumbia-cultural_logic_of_computation.html
Structural identification between programmer and power elite sets up majoritarian, white male capitalist image thriving on mastery. (186) For the power elite, the laboring body of the corporation is itself a kind of computer (and in many ways a literal computer) over which he or shee exerts nearly the same pleasurable mastery the programmer experiences in front of the computer. In this sense, and this conclusion can be only speculative, there is a structural identification between programmer and power elite that largely serves the eliteƒs ends.
(186-187) power is shared through the provision of a device, the computer, that provides a kind of illusion of social power in its structural proffering of relational power.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK haraway-simians_cyborgs_women (213) 20130923t 0 -2+ progress/2009/04/notes_for_haraway-simians_cyborgs_women.html
Winograd and Flores doctrine of interdependence and situated preunderstandings. (213) Terry Winograd and Fernando Floresƒ (1986) joint work on
Understanding Computers and Cognition is particularly suggestive for thinking about the potentials for cultural/scientific/political contestation over the technologies of representation and embodiment of ƒdifferenceƒ within immunological discourse, whose object of knowledge is a kind of ƒartificial intelligence/language/communication system of the biological bodyƒ.
(213) Drawing on Heidegger, Gadamer, Maturana, and others, Winograd and Flores develop a doctrine of interdependence of interpreter and interpreted, which are not discrete and independent entities.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK hayles-my_mother_was_a_computer (118) 20130930c 0 -5+ progress/2011/12/notes_for_hayles-my_mother_was_a_computer.html
Stephenson as programmer and open source advocate writing science fiction, deliberate and unconscious. (118) With an impressive background as a computer programmer, Stephenson does not employ the ubiquitous Windows or even Macintosh but interfaces with the computer through a Unix-based operating system. . . . Following this line of thought, we can assume that the clash of operating systems including all that it implies about the nefarious corporate practices of Microsoft, the capitalistic greed that underlies its ruthless business practices, and the resistance to these practices by open source communities, particularly Unix and the related Linux penetrated deeply into the electronic structure of this text [
Cryptonomicon] in physical and material ways.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK hayles-my_mother_was_a_computer (124) 20130930e 0 -5+ progress/2011/12/notes_for_hayles-my_mother_was_a_computer.html
Compare analysis of Stephenson Cryptonomicon to Kittler on code. (124) He comments that itƒs become evident to me when I looked into the history of computers that they had this intimate relationship with cryptography going back a long way. . . .
Command Line, which as we have seen can be considered the nonfictional companion to Cryptonomicon, offers valuable insights into the conjunction between writing novels and writing code insights that are essential to explicating the next phase of the dialectical transformation.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK heim-electric_language (244-245) 20130324 0 -9+ progress/2008/09/notes_for_heim-electric_language.html
Compare as clustering stickies on whiteboard practice described in Dreaming in Code. (244-245) Using a large sheet of paper and a pen or pencil, the writer gathers related ideas around a central notion. . . . Unlike outlining, clustering does not aim to establish an order or subordination of ideas. . . .The graphically haphazard quality of clustering is essential, for it preserves the sense of personal expression apart from any need to communicate the thoughts or present them publicly.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK hockey-history_of_humanities_computing (4) 20140913e 0 -5+ progress/2014/09/notes_for_hockey-history_of_humanities_computing.html
Rudimentary hypertextual features advertised as Latin cum hypertextibus; user guide in Latin, English, Italian. (4) His team attempted to write some computer software to deal with this and, eventually, the lemmatization of all 11 million words was completed in a semi-automatic way with human beings dealing with word forms that the program could not handle. . . . A CD ROM of the Aquinas material appeared in 1992 that incorporated some hypertextual features (
cum hypertextibus ) (Busa 1992) and was accompanied by a user guide in Latin, English, and Italian.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work NULL 20131003o 0 0+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Remaining programmers are more men: Ozzie, Roizen, Carr, Raskin, Hertzfeld, Iwatani, Kim, Lanier, Hawley.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (1) 20131002b 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Are timeless matters philosophy in the context of technology studies, comparing to Stroustrup introduction? (1) The purpose of each interview was not to interrogate the programmer about secret projects or gather opinions about day-to-day developments within the software industry. Instead, we aimed to discuss timeless matters that often get overlooked in this hectic, fast-paced industry.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (1) 20131002c 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Compare to Plutarch Lives and other works in this genre like Out of Their Minds. (1) In the interviews, I tried to ask all the programmers a common set of questions to provide a framework by which the interviews could later be read and compared.
(2) We gave them the opportunity to rework the interview, so that it expressed exactly what they meant.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (3) 20131104 0 -7+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Apparent white male American hegemony behind the software notable for software, code, and programming studies. (3) We have included a range of ages and experiences from the older, well-established programmers in their forties who first set off the microcomputer revolution, to the younger, energetic, less traditional thinkers who are intent upon taking the computer revolution far beyond the boundaries we know today. . . . Yet there is no doubt that the programmers featured in this book are exceptional and offer intriguing insights into the creative process of programming and the variety of personalities and experiences within the computer industry.
(3) While the intent of the interviews was to discuss the programmer at work, what has come along with the interviews is an informal history of the software industry, as told by some of the major participants involved. The order of the book roughly reflects the history of the industry.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (3) 20131002f 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Programmer defined in sense of architect develops or designs software, though may not write actual code. (3) For the purposes of this book, the word
programmer is defined as a developer of software or a designer of software, often but not always involved in the actual writing of source code.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (3) 20131002h 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
This is why not to include mediocre; but now there is the long tail. (3) We have included a range of ages and experiences from the older, well-established programmers in their forties who first set off the microcomputer revolution, to the younger, energetic, less traditional thinkers who are intent upon taking the computer revolution far beyond the boundaries we know today.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (3) 20131104a 5 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
This view of the software industry that imagines it started with the personal computer fits Campbell-Kelly observation that microcomputer-based software industry arose from different basis. (3)
(3) While the intent of the interviews was to discuss the programmer at work, what has come along with the interviews is an informal history of the software industry, as told by some of the major participants involved. The order of the book roughly reflects the history of the industry.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (8) 20131002i 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: for each programmer a page laid out with notes or code snippets on the left, one the right a head shot drawing, name, biography for no apparent order. (8) The first program I ever wrote filled in a magic square, where all the columns and rows added up to the same sum.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (8) 20131002j 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: compare to Kittler not Floridi point that Turing loved binary coding. (8) It was a Russian-made computer, a Ural II. It had only 4K of memory, a 40-bit floating point, and 20-bit operations. The computer was programmed totally in octal absolute [no assembler]. I wrote thousands of lines of code in octal absolute.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (8) 20131002k 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: shared enthrallment with programming with Gates, but on Ural II instead of Altair; everyone can, and should, remember when they first learned programming, and what influenced their style. (8) The Ural II was exactly like a personal computer because it was just you and the machine and no one else. With 4K of memory and the slow speed, it was very similar to the Altair, which was introduced in 1974. The excitement I experienced with the Ural II in 1964 was the same kind of excitement that Bill Gates experienced with the Altair in 1974.
(10) I had two influences an engineer in Hungary and the computer I worked on in Denmark.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (10) 20130123 0 -7+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: designed by Naur of BNF, the Algol compiler machine language listings served as Heim huge writing areas whose materiality as printed paper pages gave a place to write out the Algol semantics; this aspect of the function of texts associated with learning programming I had not considered when contemplating the Apple and Timex Sinclair manuals. (10) The Danish computer also had an incredible influence on me. At that time, I had probably the worldƒs best Algol compiler, called Gier Algol. Before I went to Denmark, I had complete listings of the compiler, which I had studied inside and out. It was all written in machine language, so it was both a lesson in machine-language programming and an aesthetically beautiful way of thinking about a compilation process. It was designed by Peter Naur.
(10) If you scan backwards they become backward references, which are easy to resolve. Just by looking at a program in a new way, what formerly might have been rather difficult to solve becomes easy to solve.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (13) 20131002m 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: Joke implicit in Hungarian notation. (13) The joke is that the program looks so unreadable, it might as well be written in Hungarian. But itƒs a set of conventions that controls the naming of all quantities in the program.
(14) Hungarian is a way of almost automatically creating a name from the properties of the named quantity. Very similar to the idea of calling people Taylor if they were tailors and Smyth if they were blacksmiths.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (14) 20131002n 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: if everyone programmed synaptogenesis may incorporate this computational convention for humans to use working code. (14) So Hungarian introduces some abbreviated notation to encode the properties in a short space.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (15) 20131002o 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: style of doodling, designing data structures, then code writes itself, likely considered proto object oriented. (15) The first step in programming is imagining. Just making it crystal clear in my mind what is going to happen. In this initial stage, I use paper and pencil. I just doodle, I donƒt write code.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (15) 20131002p 0 -7+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: teaching style of learning style writing code accomplishing directed goals. (15) The knowledge of the best algorithms is the science, and the imagining of the structure is the art. The details of algorithms, writing efficient lines of code to implement transformations on those structures, is the trade aspect of programming.
(16) First, it was easier for me to work in this incredibly high-level language, essentially programming these people. Second, the really learned to program much better than if I had finished it and given them the listing and said, Study this program. They learned it because they wrote it.
(18) Programmers get a couple of books on their first day here. One of them, called How to Solve It, is by George Polya, the mathematician.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (22) 20131002s 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Simonyi: hopefully they are doing incredible stuff together in retirement for benefit of everyone, for example using free software licenses like GPL. (22) It would be great to be able to work with all these guys, but we are business competitors. I think we could do incredible stuff together.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (28) 20131002t 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Lampson: importance of combining logical reasoning and experimental sciences or humanities in service of programming. (28) From mathematics, you learn logical reasoning. You also learn what it means to prove something as well as how to handle abstract essentials. From an experimental science such as physics, or from the humanities, you learn how to make connections in the real world by applying these abstractions.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (33) 20131002u 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Lampson: style of precisely defining interfaces. (33) The most important goal is to define as precisely as possible the interfaces between the system and the rest of the world, as well as the interfaces between the major parts of the systems as well.
(33) Programmers often lose sight of the fact that the problems in building software systems arise because what they are trying to do is just too hard. They believe the computer is a universal engine that can do anything. Itƒs very easy to be seduced into the proposition that a group of one or five or ten or fifty or a thousand programmers can make the computer do anything.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (33) 20131002v 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Lampson: organizing solution into manageable structure. (33) The most important quality is the ability to organize the solution to the problem into a manageable structure, with each component specified in a simple way.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (38) 20131002w 0 -9+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Lampson: not worth universal learning literacy in a single language. (38) To hell with computer literacy. Itƒs absolutely ridiculous. Study mathematics. Lean to think. Read. Write. These things are of more enduring value. Learn how to prove theorems: A lot of evidence has accumulated over the centuries that suggests this skill is transferable to many other things. To study only BASIC programming is absurd.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (44) 20131002y 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Warnock: style of preference for interpretive environment and interactive languages like LISP. (44) I prefer the LISP-style languages, because theyƒre more interactive and theyƒre interpreters; I like the interpretive environment.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (47) 20131104c 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Warnock: writing programs like writing books: must be willing to scrap bad parts, borrow from others. (47) Itƒs very important that a programmer be able to look at a piece of code like a bad chapter of a book and scrap it without looking back.
(47) Also, never make an assumption that you know something somebody else doesnƒt know.
(47) Itƒs a matter of picking and choosing from that smorgasbord to make a good menu, so to speak, to do a given task.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (54) 20131002z 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Warnock: programs reflect the organization in which they are written. (54) I once heard that any programs you write reflect the organization in which you work.
(55) The best mathematics of computation was done before the advent of computers. Mathematicians laid much of the groundwork of what could and couldnƒt be done in computers.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (59) 20131003 0 -6+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Killdall: style of drawing data structures and program operations before writing code; automotive transmission mechanical gearwork (Papert); fast edit, execute, debug cycles for iterative improvement; few written comments in favor of well-written code; spontaneous coding from written description of algorithms; concise and efficient ALGOL philosophy. (59) Programs are like mechanical devices; the way one piece of code works with another is very similar to the way one gear meshes with another gear. Building code is a little like building a transmission.
(60) This whole process of iterative improvement requires speed, so for me at least, itƒs very important to have fast edit, execute, and debug cycles.
(60) But a friend of mine had this FORTRAN statement card, showed it to me, and told me it was going to be a really big thing. I became so intrigued I had to get into it. So I took an assembly-language programming course and FORTRAN right after that, and I was hooked.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (63) 20131003a 0 -7+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Kildall: Admits ALGOL philosophy entrenched from spending considerable time studying and modifying the Baur compiler, evidence of important selection of tutor texts and need for long habituation and deep, active study of them in critical programming studies; pick up with Ratliff parser creation as precondition of machine intelligence. (63) Iƒm very pragmatic. I like to build programs that are fast and small, and use clear, concise algorithms. I learned that style from the early Burroughs 5500, a very advanced machine for the day, which was based upon the ALGOL philosophy of block-structured languages. The ALGOL compiler was probably one of the nicest pieces of code to come out at that time. I spent hours trying to fix and change the compiler. Working with it so closely affected the way I think about programming and had a profound influence on my style. Fortunately, the ALGOL philosophy became the basis for design of popular languages like Pascal and C, so the style works for me.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (65-66) 20131003b 0 -5+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Kildall: admits impact of doing systems programming on these preferences, suggesting graphics programmers may develop others, also religious connotations. (65-66) They form a tight-knit community, hold to certain beliefs, and follow certain rules in their programming. Itƒs like a church with a programming language for a Bible.
(67) Ultimately the problem is that we, as a society, took the big computers that we understood and applied their underlying architectures, languages, and concepts to the development of microcomputers. As we move toward using computers as controllers, we will find that communication between processors will become more important than the processes they are carrying out. Then we will be forced to change the way we code.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (73) 20131003c 0 -5+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Gates: style of thorough ideation first, most like Turkle hard mastery; simplicity, rule based. (73) You have to simulate in your mind how the programƒs going to work, and you have to have a complete grasp of how the various pieces of the program work together. The finest pieces of software are those where one individual has a complete sense of exactly how the program works.
(75) Some people just jump in and start coding, and others think it all through before they sit down, but I think youƒd find that the programmers who sit down and code at the beginning are only using that as a scratch pad. Itƒs whatƒs going on in their heads thatƒs most important.
(78) One sign of very good programs is that even internally they follow that philosophy of simplicity.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (95) 20131003f 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Page: style of prioritizing end user, setting goal and executing with tunnel vision, C, single mind design, not hiding technology from user, high productivity over high control, working solutions trump conforming with ideals of computer science. (95) In designing PFS, I stumbled over an odd software design principle: Complicated programs are far easier to write than straightforward programs the exact opposite of what youƒd expect. Itƒs easy to write complicated programs because you reflect the complexity back onto the user; you force the user to make all the hard decisions.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (95) 20131003g 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Page: complicated programs easier to write because complexity projected onto user like difficult to read technical or philosophical texts. (95) In designing PFS, I stumbled over an odd software design principle: Complicated programs are far easier to write than straightforward programs the exact opposite of what youƒd expect. Itƒs easy to write complicated programs because you reflect the complexity back onto the user; you force the user to make all the hard decisions.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (96) 20131003h 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Page: prefers compiled C over interpreted Pascal and BASIC. (96) Weƒre switching to C as we develop new versions because it is a better development language than Pascal.
(96) The Pascal was interpreted, which meant its performance left a whole lot to be desired. And once the program was finished, it was extremely slow, so I isolated all of the areas where the performance bottlenecks occurred and recoded those in Assembly language.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (114) 20131003i 0 -1+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Ratliff: example code is C subroutines from dBASE III illustrating style. (114) I decided that the world needed a natural-language database manager.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (116) 20131003j 0 -16+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Ratliff: style of open-ended toolmaker, enough planning to get to next step, which is reached emotionally and intuitively; ideal modules are all page length, equally distributed hierarchy; alphabetizing, few comments; enjoys challenge over addressing social needs. (116) dBASE caught peopleƒs imaginations because itƒs very open-ended. The way Iƒve programmed all my life is as a toolmaker.
(118) So now, programming is much more evolutionary, when before it was sort of a big bang.
(119) Iƒm the kind of programmer who likes to do some planning, but I donƒt plan everything out in infinite detail. I have an idea of what the goal is, but the real job is to find out what the next step is to get toward that goal. I try to do the minimum that will get me one step further. . . . Itƒs not mathematically defined. Itƒs emotionally and intuitively defined.
(120) The ideal module should be a page long. . . . Part of the elegance, and the balance, is that at a certain level, in this layer-cake hierarchy of a program, all the modules should be about the same weight, same size, same duty, and same functionality.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (124) 20130124 0 -4+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Ratliff: arriving from Kildall articulating preconditions of creating human programmers, parser building software embodies goal Gates and other identify of code generated code generation permitting large scale programming operations to continue to be performed replacing repetitive coding previously performed by masses of clueless programmers doing menial repetitive object definitions akin to setting parameters in run time dynamic configuration required for the software to run as precondition of emergent distributed local and world network planetary machine intelligence; thus we should not be surprised that the community building sense of social machines have been working us all along. (124) You have some little spark, and then you keep tacking other capabilities onto it. When that euphoria fades and you have to start coding, it gets tough.
(126) My goal is to write neat software, programs that are challenging. Itƒs not my mission to solve social needs, but that can be another nice outcome for software.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (147) 20131003l 0 -2+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Bricklin: users do programming via style sheets and spreadsheets. (147) Weƒre just making the users do more and more of the programming themselves, but they donƒt know it. Using different style sheets with Microsoft Word is doing programming; using spreadsheets is doing programming.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (159) 20131003m 0 -3+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Frankston: style of code that is easy to pick up and modify. (159) Iƒve had people say that itƒs easier to pick up my code, and I really do write it so people can pick it up. Also, I write so I can pick up the code and make local changes without worrying too much about the effect. The comments are mainly to warn about surprises.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK lammers-programmers_at_work (167) 20131003n 0 -15+ progress/2012/04/notes_for_lammers-programmers_at_work.html
Sachs: style of rapid iterations starting with basic working unit; visualizing then writing automatic; avoids immutable third party tools. (167) Thatƒs how Iƒve always done things when I work by myself. I get the program up so that it just begins to work, and then I add features to it.
(169) Math is too hard. I can do mathematics up to the point where I stop being able to visualize the problem. When it gets abstract, I canƒt do it.
(169) Once you get a certain level of experience, you go from the idea to the program without even thinking about all the intermediate steps; the process becomes automatic.
(171) First, I start out with a basic program framework, which I keep adding to. Also, I try not to use many fancy features in a language or a program. . . . I donƒt like using any tools or programs I didnƒt write myself or that I donƒt have some control over. That way if I donƒt like some part, I can change it. As a rule, I like to keep programs simple.
(172) Iƒm not a particularly creative person; my real skill is taking ideas and integrating them to make a nice package.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK levy-hackers (39) 20120514 0 0+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_levy-hackers.html
Compare to selection of wizards in Programmers At Work, Out of Their Minds, and other histories. (39)

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (664) 20131019 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Habitat on-line simulated world many-participant environment a new media form. (664) The system we developed can support a population of thousands of users in a single shared cyberspace. Habitat presents its users with a real-time animated view into an on-line simulated world in which users can communicate, play games, go on adventures, fall in love, get married, get divorced, start businesses, found religions, wage wars, protest against them, and experiment with self-government.
(664) At the core of our vision is the idea that cyberspace is necessarily a
many-participant environment.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (665) 20131019a 0 -7+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Habitat inspired by computer hacker science fiction Vinge True Names, originally C64 front end with avatars representing players. (665) Habitat was inspired by a long tradition of computer hacker science fiction, notably Vernor Vingeƒs story, True Names (1981), as well as many fond childhood memories of games of make-believe, more recent memories of role-playing games and the like, and numerous other influences too thoroughly blended to pinpoint. To this we added a dash of silliness, a touch of cyberpunk (Gibson 1985, Sterling 1986), and a predilection for object-oriented programming (Abelson and Sussman 1985).
(665) The initial incarnation of Habitat uses a Commodore 64 for the frontend. . . . The players are represented by animated figures that we call
Avatars.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (665) 20131019b 0 -2+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Object-oriented model of universe at heart of Habitat. (665) At the heart of the Habitat implementation is an object-oriented model of the universe.
(665) The objects implement the semantics of the world itself.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (667) 20131019c 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Bandwidth scarcity lessened by aim of communicating human behaviors that can be abstracted; theorists like Hayles who examine differences between inscription and incorporation would disagree. (667) Even in a more technically advanced network, however, bandwidth remains scarce in the sense that economists use the term: available carrying capacity is not unlimited.
(667) However, the most significant part of what
we wish to be communicating are human behaviors. These, fortunately, can be represented quite compactly, provided we adopt a relatively abstract, high-level description that deals with behavioral concepts directly.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (668-669) 20131019f 0 -8+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Criticism of ISO reference model is their ethnographic contribution. (668-669) We have two main quarrels with the ISO model: first, it partitions the general data communications problem in a way that is a poor match for the needs of a cyberspace system; second, and more important, we think that the model itself is an active source of confusion because it focuses the attention of system designers on the wrong set of issues and thus leads them to spend their time solving the wrong set of problems. We know because this happened to us. Presentation and Application are simply the wrong abstractions for the higher levels of a cyberspace communications protocol. A Presentation protocol presumes that at least some characteristics of the display are embedded in the protocol. . . . an Application protocol presumes a degree of foreknowledge of the message environment that is incompatible with the sort of dynamically evolving object systems we envision.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (669) 20131019g 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Their revision of the ISO OSI model with different pair of top layers is of philosophical significance. (669) A better model would be to substitute a different pair of top layers (Figure 46.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (669) 20131019h 0 -2+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
World building can lead to a discussion of Brooks and working as a programmer in corporate America thinks the subject of the thought. (669) Initially, we were our own worst enemies in this undertaking, victims of a way of thinking to which all engineers are dangerously susceptible. This way of thinking is characterized by the conceit that all things may be planned in advance and then directly implemented according to the planƒs detailed specification.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (670) 20131019i 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Reject detailed central planning. (670) Places whose value lies in their uniqueness, or at least in their differentiation from the places around them, need to be crafted by hand. This is an incredibly labor-intensive and time-consuming process. Furthermore, even very imaginative people are limited in the range of variation that they can produce, especially if they are working in a virgin environment uninfluenced by the works and reactions of other designers.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (671) 20131019k 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Alternative design approach based on evolutionary and market principles; compare to Suchman plans and situation actions. (671) Indeed, the challenges posed by large systems in general are prompting some researchers to question the centralized, planning-dominated attitude that we have criticized here, and to propose alternative approaches based on evolutionary and market principles.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (672) 20131019l 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Anarchists and statists; evolve governments rather than coding default one, as there will never be perfectly coded spaces (Kitchin and Dodge). (672) It was clear, however, that there are two basic camps: anarchists and statists. This division of characters and world views is an issue that will need to be addressed by future cyberspace architects. However, our view remains that a virtual world need not be set up with a default government, but can instead evolve one as needed.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (672-673) 20131019m 0 -9+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Cyberspace designers and operators inhabit infrastructure and experiential levels; cannot trust users access to infrastructure. (672-673) Designers and operators of a cyberspace system must inhabit two levels of virtuality at once. The first we call the infrastructure level, the level of implementation, where the laws that govern reality have their genesis. The second we call the experiential level, which is what the users see and interact with. It is important that there not be leakage between these two levels. . . . When we exhort cyberspace system designers to give control to the users, we mean control at the experiential level. When we say that you canƒt trust anyone, we mean that you canƒt trust them with access to the infrastructure level.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (674) 20131019o 0 -4+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Example of killing Death as difficult negotiations between experiential and infrastructural levels to work within the system. (674) Wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be.
(674) One of the goals of a next generation Habitat-like system ought to be to permit far greater creative involvement by the participants
without requiring them to ascend to full-fledged guruhood to do so.
(675) Operating within the participantsƒ world model produced a very satisfactory result. On the other hand, taking what seemed like the expedient course, which involved violating the world model, provoked upset and dismay.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (675) 20131019p 0 -4+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Development and expansion by users future direction, as is done in Second Life. (675) However, the line of development most interesting to us is to expand on the idea of making the development and expansion of the world itself part of the usersƒ sphere of control.
(675) The backend is a communications and processing bottleneck that will not withstand growth above too large a size. While we can support tens of thousands of users with this model, it is not really feasible to support millions.
(676) The second fertile area of investigation involves user configuration of the world itself.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat (676) 20131019r 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_morningstar_farmer-lucasfilms_habitat.html
Challenge for cyberspace to present humanity as it really is rather than designer plan. (676) Cyberspace may indeed change humanity, but only if it begins with humanity as it really is.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK murray-hamlet_on_the_holodeck (57) 20131006h 0 -8+ progress/2008/11/notes_for_murray-hamlet_on_the_holodeck.html
Storyspace hypertext system by Bolter and Smith designed for writing narrative as linked text blocks; look for programmer perspective. (57) The literary publisher Eastgate Systems distinguishes its products from both pornographic Web soaps and games by calling them serious hypertext. The pioneering work in this genre is
Michael Joyceƒs Afternoon (1987), written in the Storyspace hypertext system, which he codesigned with Jay David Bolter and John Smith specifically for the purpose of writing narrative as a set of linked text blocks.
(58) But to the postmodern writer, confusion is not a bug but a feature. In the jargon of the postmodern critics, Joyce is intentionally problematizing our expectations of storytelling, challenging us to construct our own text from the fragments he has provided. . . . The architectural playfulness of
Afternoon, its construction as a series of discrete lexia linked by overlapping paths, and the poetic shaping of its individual lexia mark it as the first narrative to lay claim to the digital environment as a home for serious literature in new formats.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (354) 20131019 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Modeling intentionalities based on leaving much to infer rather than full disclosure. (354) A well-developed working relationship is in fact characterized by one partyƒs leaving a great deal of information for the other party to infer and assuming it will be inferred correctly.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (355) 20131019a 0 -6+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
HUNCH sketch recognition defines three models from computer viewpoint including reflection: what I think that you think I think of you is important. (355) Following some work with Gordon Pask, we proposed in HUNCH An Experiment in Sketch Recognition (Negroponte, Groisser, and Taggart, 1972) that man-computer interactions should be supported by three levels of model. From the computerƒs point of view, these include (1) its model of you, (2) its model of your model of it, and (3) its model of your model of its model of you.
(355) In human relations, what I think you think that I think of you is as important as (and can be more important than) what I really think of you. I suspect that forthcoming research will reveal that this model is crucial to learning about people on a person-to-person level. This is because a deep acquaintance can be described as a state of convergence between this third level of model and the first. When your model of my model of your model of me is almost a replica of your model of me, we can say that you know me: in terms of a human relationship, that we have reached a level of confidence and trust.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (356) 20131019b 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Participatory design via very personal computing machine. (356) The questions of this chapter focus on housing (which represents 85 percent of the built environment). The general thesis is that
each individual can be his own architect. The participation is achieved in association with a very personal computing machine.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (359) 20131019c 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
What role does architect take based on attitude toward participation: paternal, middleman, riskless? (359) In this sense, it is interesting to question the role of the architect in terms of comfort and confidence; can it be embraced in a machine and thus avoid the potential orphanage of participation?

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (361) 20131019d 0 -3+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Design amplifier as interim step to wizard machine. (361) Before I begin I feel obliged to tell you that The Architecture Machine Group has worked very sporadically and without much success on this problem. The notion of a
design amplifier is new and might provide an interim step between the present and the wizard machine, the surrogate human.
(361) As such, let us consider aspects of a design amplifier in terms of a somewhat dual existence: the benevolent educator and the thirsting
student, all in one.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (361) 20131019e 0 -2+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Child treats computer as automatic student (Papert). (361) In brief, their [Papert and his colleagues] theory is that computer-aided instruction should be treated as the amplification and enlightening of the processes of learning and thinking themselves, rather than merely presenting and drilling specific subject matter. To achieve this, the computer is treated, in some sense, as an automatic student
by the child.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (363) 20131019f 0 -1+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Avoid initiating dialogue by asking directing questions. (363) We must avoid initiating dialogue by asking questions because the questions perforce flavor the answer.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK negroponte-soft_architecture_machines (363) 20131019g 0 -2+ progress/2013/10/notes_for_negroponte-soft_architecture_machines.html
Network of design amplifiers a form of human-computer symbiosis beyond what Licklider imagined, as is the following plan recognition experiment. (363) The general scheme would be a network of many (one per person) design amplifiers working in concert with a variety of larger host machines, machines that could direct questions to other amplifiers or could answer those related to more global matters. An advantage of this layout is the opportunity, hitherto impossible, for personal negotiations within a regulatory framework that could capitalize upon the special-case amenities that are important to me and are available for negotiation.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK rosenberg-dreaming_in_code (30) 20131009g 0 -1+ progress/2013/03/notes_for_rosenberg-dreaming_in_code.html
Compare this characterization of Herzfeld style with depiction in Lammers. (30) At OSAF meetings [Andy]
Herzfeldƒs voice was the most consistent in pushing the developers to stop designing and start coding or at least to start coding without waiting for the ground to cool.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ryan-beyond_myth_and_metaphor (607-608) 20131108 0 -11+ progress/2012/03/notes_for_ryan-beyond_myth_and_metaphor.html
Compare Bernstein to Bricklin garden of software. (607-608) Narrative will have to learn to share the spotlight with other types of sensory data; to accept a subordinate role, as in games, or limit itself to certain plot types. Conversely, the medium will have to give up some of its fluidity to allow narrative meaning to solidify in the mind of the reader. . . . To borrow a metaphor from Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems (1998), the compromise between being lost in the wilderness and being sucked onto the freeway is to be invited into a garden with many carefully designed paths. . . . This combination of designed space and serendipitous discovery, mapped trails and surprise attractions, contained area and expanding vista make the garden look much bigger than it really is. This may be the closest one gets to the mythical Aleph, without entering a jungle where narrative meaning chokes in the brambles of uncontrollable multiplicity.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (xii) 20131108 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
States position as technological radical and economic conservative. (xii) I am a technological radical and an economic conservative.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (13) 20131009b 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Technological advance will raise real wages unless scarcity of capital causes rising interest rates. (13) In sum:
so long as the rate of interest remains constant, an advance in technology can only produce a rising level of real wages. The only route through which technological advance could lower real wages would be by increasing the capital coefficient (the added cost being compensated by a large decline in the labor coefficient), thereby creating a scarcity of capital and pushing interest rates sharply upward.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (25) 20131009c 0 -3+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Human symbiosis with machines more profitable than with horses; however, machines will not abandon humans. (25) The mean, limited in number, found that they could earn higher real wages in symbiosis with machines than in symbiosis with horses, and they abandoned their old friends for the new. So long as the supply of computers responds to market forces and they do not impose birth control on themselves they will be in no position similarly to abandon man. The rewards of technological progress will still be his, not theirs.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (28) 20131009d 0 -3+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Picture society after new equilibrium settled. (28) First of all, we must predict what is likely to happen to the job of the individual manager, and to the activity of management in the individual organization. Changes in these patterns will have secondary effects on the occupational profile in the economy as a whole. Our task is to picture the society after it has made all these secondary adjustments and settled down to its new equilibrium.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (30) 20130413 0 -4+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Learning deeper understanding of complex information processing and skills to write programs are causes of change, such as thinking devices; the trend will not reach programmer kings any more than the invention of writing created scribal kings. (30) The new knowledge consists in a fundamental understanding of the processes of thinking and learning or to use a more neutral term, of complex information processing. We can now write programs for electronic computers that enable these devices to think and learn.
(30) Within the very near future much less than twenty-five years we shall have the technical capability of substituting machines for any and all human functions in organizations. Within the same period, we shall have acquired an extensive and empirically tested theory of human cognitive processes and their interaction with human emotions, attitudes, and values.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (38) 20131009e 0 -3+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Human advantage retained in use of brain as flexible, general-purpose problem-solving device, flexible use of sensory organs and hands, and use of legs, whereas competitive advantage as energy machine diminished; note Darwinian emphasis on flexibility that Malabou critiques. (38) Thus, manƒs comparative advantage in energy production has been greatly reduced in most situations to the point where he is no longer a significant source of power in our economy. He has been supplanted also in performing many relatively simple and repetitive eye-brain-hand sequences. He has retained his greatest comparative advantage in: (1) the use of his brain as a flexible general-purpose problem-solving device, (2) the flexible use of his sensory organs and hands and (3) the use of his legs, on rough terrain as well as smooth to make this general-purpose sensing-thinking-manipulating system available wherever it is needed.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (48-49) 20131009h 0 -4+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Failed prediction of extinction of programming occupation by self-programming techniques, although at the interface level human knowledge requirements to use computers has diminished. (48-49) Similarly, we can dismiss the notion that computer programmers will become a powerful elite in the automated corporation. It is far more likely that the programming occupation will become extinct (through the further development of self-programming techniques) than that it will become all-powerful. More and more, computers will program themselves; and direction will be given to computers through the mediation of compiling systems that will be completely neutral so far as content of the decision rules is concerned. Moreover, the task of communicating with computers will become less and less technical as computers come by means of computing techniques closer and closer to handling the irregularities of natural language.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (50) 20131009i 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Predictions resembling Marxist utopia as automation proceeds: developing human science, alternatives to work and production as social goals, reformulating place in universe. (50) Three of them in particular, I think, are going to receive a great deal of attention as automation proceeds: developing a science of man, finding alternatives for work and production as basic goals for society, and reformulating manƒs view of his place in the universe.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (51) 20131009j 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Expects rapid advances in teaching and dealing with human maladjustment, as if the human remains static in the process of technological advance. (51) We may expect very rapid advances in the effectiveness and efficiency of our techniques of teaching and our techniques for dealing with human maladjustment.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (66) 20131009k 0 -3+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Use of training and planned experience to improve nonprogrammed organizational decision making. (66) The processes of learning have been as mysterious as the processes of problem solving. But improvement there is. We are thus able, in a crude way, to use training and planned experience as a means for improving nonprogrammed decision making in organizations.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (69) 20131009m 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Operations research extends management decision-making techniques developed for military needs to natural scientists. (69) Operations research is a movement that, emerging out of the military needs of World War II, has brought the decision-making problems of management within the range of interests of large numbers of natural scientists and, particularly, of mathematicians and statisticians.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (72) 20131009n 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Program for making decisions by applying four steps of management decisions leads to mathematicians aphasia, pretending the problem was always the simplified abstraction reached so that the program can be executed: point made by Hayles concerning cybernetics; does this contribute to our becoming stupid? (72) This leads to an ailment that might be called
mathematicianƒs aphasia. The victim abstracts the original problem until the mathematical intractabilities have been removed (and all semblance of reality lost), solves the new simplified program, and then pretends that this was the problem he wanted to solve all along.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (76) 20131009o 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Automated factory will operate on automated office, ERP. (76) The automated factory of the future will operate on the basis of programmed decisions produced in the automated office beside it.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (77) 20131009p 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Revisit human problem solving techniques for poorly structured tasks; AI based on heuristics rather than grand algorithms (Edwards, Golumbia). (77) Nevertheless, when we run out of ideas for handling poorly structured problem-solving tasks, it seems plausible to examine more closely the processes used by humans who have handled such tasks not always efficiently, to be sure for several millennia.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (81) 20131009q 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Assumption that human thinking is governed by programs that are like machine programs leads to computational model of mind and belief that computer programs can be written to simulate human thought. (81) In solving problems, human thinking is governed by programs that organize myriads of simple information processes or symbol manipulating processes if you like into orderly, complex sequences that are responsive to and adaptive to the task environment and the clues that are extracted from that environment as the sequences unfold. Since programs of the same kind can be written for computers, these programs can be used to describe and simulate human thinking.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (82-83) 20131009r 0 -3+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
General Problem Solver uses complex structures of familiar simple elements to solve problems, putatively modeling how the mind works by buying into assumption that simple elements are mental programs. (82-83) The secret of problem solving is that there is no secret. It is accomplished through complex structures of familiar simple elements. The proof is that we can simulate it, using no more than those simple elements as the building blocks of our programs.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (92) 20131009s 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Prospect of building aids to human thinking based on understanding of human thinking. (92) All of these aids to human thinking, and many others, were devised without understanding the process they aided the thought process itself. The prospect before us now is that we shall understand that process.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (97) 20131009t 0 -7+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Desire for principle of moderation from Berlyne work on curiosity: interest of people and rats thrives in zones of manageable complexity, problems comprehensible in deep structure but unfamiliar in detail; thus, routine can be a welcome refuge. (97) Routine is a welcome refuge from the trackless forests of unfamiliar problem solving.
(97-98) The work on curiosity of
Berlyne and others suggests that some kind of principle of moderation applies. People (and rats) find the most interest in situations that are neither completely strange nor entirely known. . . . The pleasure that the good professional experiences in his work is not simply a pleasure in handling difficult matters; it is a pleasure in using skillfully a well-stocked kit of well-designed tools to handle problems that are comprehensible in their deep structure but unfamiliar in their detail.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (102-103) 20131009v 0 -2+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Before emergence of distributed control as an organizational design, option is how far to decentralize. (102-103) But centralizing and decentralizing are not genuine alternatives for organizations. The question is not whether we shall decentralized, but how far we shall decentralize.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (106) 20131009w 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Need for infrequent outside intervention in high speed data-processing systems; intervention takes form of system design and programming, away from operations, as reflected in development of timesharing systems. (106) Since processing steps in an automated data-processing system are executed in a thousandth or even millionth of a second, the whole system must be organized on a flow basis with infrequent intervention from outside.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK simon-shape_of_automation (108) 20131009x 0 -1+ progress/2013/04/notes_for_simon-shape_of_automation.html
Expect managerial jobs to shift toward rationalization and impersonalization; note predominant role of spreadsheet model of business highlighted by Golumbia. (108) If a couple of terms are desired to characterize the direction of change we may expect in the managerƒs job, I would propose rationalization and impersonalization.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (39-40) 20131014 0 -10+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Animal responses and lgorithmic lovemaking. (39-40) For Brian was giving me a gesture so bizarre, so inappropriate, that to this day I can hardly believe what I saw. His head was thrown back, his eyes were half closed. He sniffed at the air once, twice, three times. Then he actually snorted. Though Iƒm sure Iƒd never seen anything like it in the whole of my life, I only needed to be a primate to understand its meaning: Brian wanted to fuck me.
(49) His lovemaking was tantric, algorithmic. I once thought that love could not be programmed, but now I wondered. This sex was formulaic, had steps and positions and durations, all tried and perfected, like a martial arts kata or a well-debugged program. My own role in it was like a user-exit subroutine, an odd branch where anything might happen but from which we must return, tracing back to the mainline procedure.
(50-51) The new breed of entrepreneur: Net landlord.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (78) 20131014a 0 -5+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Human spreadsheet relationship is one of informing. (78) In the relationship between human and computer that underlies the spreadsheet, the human is the repository of knowledge, the smart agent, the active party. . . . It is the end user who creates information, who gives
form to data, who informs the spreadsheet.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (78) 20131014b 0 -7+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
She notes the comparison of Internet to the library, with the absence of librarian role in searching. (78) The relationship between person and machine is completely reversed on the Internet. The Net is the knowledge repository, and the user can only search it.
(80) I begin to wonder if there isnƒt something in computer systems that is like a suburban development. Both take places real, particular places and turn them into anyplace.
(82) Something similar happened with the AIDS project. Despite the idealism of the programmers, the good intentions of my clientƒs staff, the hard work of the users, what we created in the end was not the system of care we set out to build. In the end, what we created was only a system.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (84) 20131014c 0 -3+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Compare to von Neumann analysis of the differences between natural and artificial automata. (84) I tried to warn her that the machine cannot keep rounded edges; that its dumb, declarative nature could not comprehend the small, chaotic accommodations to reality which kept human systems running.
(89) Many years and clients later, this greed for more data, and more again, had become a commonplace. It had become institutionalized as a good feature of computer systems.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (101) 20131108 0 -7+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
State of perpetual learning by maintaining posture of ignorant humility. (101) Iƒve managed to stay in a perpetual state of learning only by maintaining what I think of as a posture of ignorant humility.
(107) So I never did hear the older one explain how you get used to it after a while, how it becomes normal to discard your certainty and hunker down into the newest thing, how it is no fun but there is a certain perverse satisfaction in reorienting your brain at a right angle to its previous position. And there, lost, you go ahead anyway. And there, somehow, you make it run.
(110) The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what weƒre doing.
(110) Over the years, the horrifying knowledge of ignorant expertise became normal, a kind of background level of anxiety that only occasionally blossomed into outright fear.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (101) 20131014d 0 -6+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Dedicated serial monogamist; hard on emotions, good profile for technology. (101) This process of remembering technologies is a little like trying to remember all your lovers: you have to root around in the past and wonder. Letƒs see. Have I missed anybody? In some ways, my personal life has made me uniquely suited to the technical life. Iƒm a
dedicated serial monogamist long periods of intense engagement punctuated by times of great restlessness and searching. As hard as this may be on the emotions, it is a good profile for technology.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (115) 20120615 0 -1+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Value of historical computing experience could be for philosophizing, which is what she is doing with this book. (115) But all this history had to be worth something, I felt, There had to be some threads, some concepts, some themes that transcended the details, something in computing that made it worth being alive for more than thirty-five years.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (117) 20130909a 0 -5+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
At least for custom, special purpose software like automation systems, nobody understands an old one; is it not the same for discourse systems, at least in the humanities? (117) The preciousness of an old system is axiomatic. The longer the system has been running, the greater the number of programmers who have worked on it, the less any one person understands it. As years pass and untold numbers of programmers and analysts come and go, the system takes on a life of its own. It runs. That is its claim to existence: it does useful work.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (126-127) 20130909b 0 -6+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Virtual as living in the not-quite-here-ness of the machine and its software; compare to other ontological formulations. (126-127) The word virtual no longer roams freely in the English language, however. It has been captured by computers.
To say virtual means living in the not-quite-here-ness of the machine and its software. The word retains the sense of the missing, the not real. But somehow this not-ness has become a good thing. To be ephemerally existent, to float in some indefinable plane now known as cyberspace thatƒs supposed to be grand.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (145) 20130909c 0 -5+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Meeting in the online village easy connection to recent Turkle. (145) He had his home in the postmodern village: the workplace, the last place where your position in the order of things is still known, where people must put up with you on a regular basis, over a long period of time, and you with them. Families scatter, marriages end, yet the office and the factory have hung on a bit longer as staple human gathering places. Maybe this is why the decline of industrial work and the downsizing of corporations have produced such anxiety: the final village is dissolving, and those of us without real jobs or fakes where will we meet each other now?
(145) On line, I suppose. As virtualized creatures swimming along in private pools of time.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (178-179) 20131014f 0 -3+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Lost track of number of lovers. (178-179) I could no longer count the number of lovers Iƒd had. I could only remember the time when, with great surprise, Iƒd realized that the number of men and women had become about equal. After that, Iƒd let go of the ordinals, the list of names, in sequence, and what remained was a flickering serial memory of making love, and the constant amazement at how different it was with every single person.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK ullman-close_to_the_machine (189) 20131014g 0 -1+ progress/2012/05/notes_for_ullman-close_to_the_machine.html
Driving a fast car to unknown destination where anything can happen. (189) I race past the trucks, the hills shine deep green in the clear light, and, for the moment, Iƒm just where Iƒm supposed to be: driving a fast car to a place I donƒt know yet, where anything can happen.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (6) 20131010 0 -1+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
Awakened to Polanyi scientific outlook produced mechanical conception of man. (6) Such questions were my awakening to what [Michael]
Polanyi had earlier called a scientific outlook that appeared to have produced a mechanical conception of man.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (12) 20130709a 0 -11+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
From juridicial to logical basis of spiritual cosmology and rationality. (12) But at bottom, no matter how it may be disguised by technological jargon, the question is whether or not every aspect of human thought is reducible to a logical formalism, or, to put it into the modern idiom, whether or not human thought is entirely computable. That question has, in one form or another, engaged thinkers in all ages. Man has always striven for principles that could organize and give sense and meaning to his existence. But before modern science fathered the technologies that reified and concretized its otherwise abstract systems, the systems of thought that defined manƒs place in the universe were fundamentally juridicial. . . . The spiritual cosmologies engendered by modern science, on the other hand, are infected with the germ of logical necessity.
(13) I would argue that, however intelligent machines may be made to be, there are some acts of thought that
ought to be attempted only by humans. One socially significant question I thus intend to raise is over the proper place of computers in the social order. But, as we shall see, the issue transcends computers in that it must ultimately deal with logicality itself quite apart from whether logicality is encoded in computer programs or not.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason (17-18) 20130710 0 -11+ progress/2013/07/notes_for_weizenbaum-computer_power_and_human_reason.html
Tools also have pedagogical function; symbol of activity, model for reproduction, script for reenactment of skill. (17-18) His tools, whatever their primary practical function, are necessarily also pedagogical instruments. They are then part of the stuff out of which man fashions his imaginative reconstruction of the world.
(18) They symbolize the activities they enable, i.e., their own use. . . . A tool is also a model for its own reproduction and a script for the reenactment of the skill it symbolizes.
(19) But devices and machines, perhaps known to (and certainly owned and operated by) only a relatively few members of society, have often influenced the self-image of its individual members and the world-image of the society as a whole quite as profoundly as have widely used hand tools.
(20) Many machines are functional additions to the human body, virtually prostheses.

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Clock as autonomous machine rather than prosthesis (Mumford). (24) The clock is clearly not a prosthetic machine; it extends neither manƒs muscle nor his senses. It is an autonomous machine.
(24) An
autonomous machine is one that, once started, runs by itself on the basis of an internalized model of some aspect of the real world.
(25) The various states of this model were given names and thus reified. And the whole collection of them superimposed itself on the existing world and changed it, just as much as a cataclysmic rearrangement of its geography or climate might have changed it. . . . It is important to realize that this newly created reality was and remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.

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We ignore the possibility of different responses than computerization that may have occurred in telling the history of technological advance; Forrester focused on inability to act as impetus to build SAGE. (30) The inability to act which, as [J. W.]
Forrester points out, provided the incentive to augment or replace the low-internal-speed human organizations with computers, might in some other historical situation have been an incentive for modifying the task to be accomplished, perhaps doing away with it altogether, or for restructuring the human organizations whose inherent limitations were, after all, seen as the root of the trouble. . . . But the computer was used to build, in the words of one air force colonel, a servomechanism spread out over an area comparable to the whole American continent, that is, the SAGE air-defense system.
(31) An enormous acceleration of social invention, had it begun then, would now seem to us as natural a consequence of manƒs predicament in that time as does the flood of technological invention and innovation that was actually stimulated.
(31) The computer, then, was used to conserve Americaƒs social and political institutions. It buttressed them and immunized them, at least temporarily, against enormous pressures for change.

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Automation of tab rooms with computers compared to mere substitution of horses by steam engines; transformation awaited its application to operations research and systems analysis. (33-34) Still, business used the early computers to simply automate its tab rooms, i.e., to perform exactly the earlier operations, only now automatically and, presumably, more efficiently. The crucial transition, from the business computer as a mere substitute for work-horse tab machines to its present status as a versatile information engine, began when the power of the computer was projected onto the framework already established by operations research and systems analysis.
(34-35) It is important to understand very clearly that strengthening a particular technique putting muscles on it contributes nothing to its validity. . . . If astrology is nonsense, then computerized astrology is just as surely nonsense.

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Effective procedure set of state-transition rules telling player precisely how to behave from moment to moment, allowing treatment of formal language as game. (42) The laws embodied by a machine that interacts with the real world must perforce to be a subset of the laws governing the real world.
(44) A crucial property that the set of rules of any game must have is that they be complete and consistent.
(45) Using this terminology, we may characterize the rules of an abstract game as
state-transition rules.
(46) Such a set of rules that is, a set of rules which tells a player precisely how to behave from one moment to the next is called an
effective procedure.
(48) The problem that thus arises would be solved if there were a single inherently unambiguous language in which we could and would write all effective procedures.
(50) A formal language is a game. That is not a mere metaphor but a statement asserting a formal correspondence. But if that statement is true, we should, when talking about a language, be able to easily move back and forth between a game-like vocabulary and a corresponding language-like vocabulary.

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Importance of constructing universal machines; example of a Turing-machine like game using toilet paper, white and black stones, and a die. (62) Turing proved that a universal Turing machine exists by showing how to construct one.
(63) Turing answered that question as well: a Turing machine can be built to realize any process that could naturally be called an effective procedure.
(64) Such a way of knowing is very weak. We do not say we know a city, let alone that we understand it, solely on the basis of having a detailed map of it. Apart from that, if we understand the language in which a procedure is written well enough to be able to explicate its transformation rules, we probably understand what rules stated in that language tell us to do.
(67) Leaving to one side everything having to do with formally undecidable questions, interminable procedures, and defective procedures, the unavoidable question confronts us: Are all decisionmaking processes that humans employ reducible to effective procedures and hence amenable to machine computation?

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Programmers sense power of computer by their ability to program it to do things, even if they do not know how it works. (103) If todayƒs programmers are largely unaware of the detailed structures of the physical machines they are using, of their languages, and of the translators that manipulate their programs, then they must also be largely ignorant of many of the arguments I have made here, particularly of those arguments concerning the universality of computers and the nature of effective procedures. How then do these programmers come to sense the power of the computer?
(103-104) Their conviction that, so to say, the computer can do anything i.e., their correct intuition that the languages available to them are, in some nontrivial sense, universal comes largely from their impression that they can program any procedure they thoroughly understand. That impression, in turn, is based on their experience of the power of subroutines and of the reducibility of complex decision processes to hierarchies of binary (i.e., two-way branching) choices.
(105) The computer programmerƒs sense of power derives largely from his conviction that this instructions will be obeyed unconditionally and that, given his ability to build arbitrarily large program structures, there is no limit to at least the size of the problems he can solve.

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Only partial understanding is needed to program, being experimental like writing; myth of depth (consider against Turkle). (107-108) The idea that a person can write a program that embodies anything he thoroughly understands is at least equally problematical. . . . In effect, we all constantly use subroutines whose input-output behavior we believe we know, but whose details we need not and rarely do think about. To understand something sufficiently well to be able to program it for a computer does not mean to understand it to its ultimate depth.

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Power corrupts; any surprise that there is a typographic error in this key part of the book? (115) One would have to be astonished if Lord Actonƒs observation that power corrupts were not to apply in an environment in which omnipotence is so easily achievable. It does apply. And the corruption evoked by the computer programmerƒs omnipotence manifests itself in a form that is instructive in a domain far larger [(sic)] that the immediate environment of the computer. To understand it, we will have to take a look at a mental disorder that, while actually very old, appears to have been transformed by the computer into a new genus: the compulsion to program.

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Hacker viewed as possessing technique but not knowledge, pleasurelessly driven like a compulsive gambler; compare to Turkle bricoleur versus hard mastery programming styles. (118) I have already said that the compulsive programmer, or hacker as he calls himself, is usually a superb technician. It seems therefore that he is not without skill as the definition would have it. But the definition fits in the deeper sense that the hacker is without definite purpose : he cannot set before himself a clearly defined long-term goal and a plan for achieving it, for he has only technique, not knowledge.
(119) But since there is no general theory of the whole system, the system itself can be only a more or less chaotic aggregate of subsystems whose influence one one anotherƒs behavior is discoverable only piecemeal and by experiment.
(120) His apparently devoted efforts to improve and promote his own creation are really an assault on it, an assault whose only consequence can be to renew his struggle with the computer.
(121) The compulsive programmer is driven; there is little spontaneity in how he behaves; and he finds no pleasure in the fulfillment of his nominal wishes. He seeks reassurance from the computer, not pleasure. The closest parallel we can find to this sort of psychopathology is in the relentless, pleasureless drive for reassurance that characterizes the life of the
compulsive gambler.

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Huxley drunk looking for keys under lamplight applied to computational cognitive science. (127) Science can proceed only by simplifying reality. The first step in its process of simplification is abstraction. And abstraction means leaving out of account all those empirical data which do not fit the particular conceptual framework within which science at the moment happens to be working, which, in other words, are not illuminated by the light of the particular lamp under which science happens to be looking for keys. Aldous
Huxley remarked on this matter with considerable clarity.

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Chomsky hypothesis that human degrees of freedom imposed by genetic endowment: universal grammar projective description of mind. (136-137) In fact, Chomskyƒs most profoundly significant working hypothesis is that manƒs genetic endowment gives him a set of highly specialized abilities and imposes on him a corresponding set of restrictions which, taken together, determine the number and kinds of degrees of freedom that govern and delimit all human language development.
(137) Chomskyƒs hypothesis is, to put it another way, that the rules of such a universal grammar would constitute a kind of projective description of important aspects of the human mind.
(139) Clearly, Simonƒs and Newellƒs ambition is taken seriously both by powerful U.S. government agencies and by a significant sector of the scientific community.
(140) A theory is first of all a text, hence a concatenation of the symbols of some alphabet. But it is a symbolic construction in a deeper sense as well; the very terms that a theory employs are symbols which, to paraphrase Abraham Kaplan, grope for their denotation in the real world or else cease to be symbolic.
(142) One use of a theory, then, is that it prepares the conceptual categories within which the theoretician and the practitioner will ask his questions and design his experiments.

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Models based on theories can figure things out, giving agency to texts; a computer program can be both theory and model, giving preferred status to writing programs to investigate even humanities questions. (143) Of course, a theory cannot figure out anything. It is, after all, merely a text. But we can often build a model on the basis of a theory. And there are models which can, in an entirely nontrivial sense, figure things out.
(144-145) Computers make possible an entirely new relationship between theories and models. . . . The point is precisely that computers do
interpret texts given to them, in other words, that texts determine computersƒ behavior. . . .

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Models also have properties of their own not shared by what they model. (150) The problem associated with the question of what is and what is not essential cuts the other way as well. A model is, after all, a different object from what it models. It therefore has properties not shared by its counterpart.
(152) Computer models have, as we have seen, some advantages over theories stated in natural language. But the latter have the advantage that patching is hard to conceal. If a theory written in natural language is, in fact, a set of patches and patches on patches, its lack of structure will be evident in its very composition. Although a computer program similarly constructed may reveal its impoverished structure to a trained reader, this kind of fault cannot be so easily seen in the programƒs performance. A programƒs performance, therefore, does not alone constitute an adequate validation of it as theory.
(152) Computer programs tend to reveal their errors, especially their lack of consistency, quickly and sharply. And, in skilled hands, computer modeling provides a quick feedback that can have a truly therapeutic effect precisely because of its immediacy.

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Computer as number cruncher valorizes analytic techniques over the ideas they enable to explore (George Miller). (159) Yet the folk wisdom that perceives the computer as a basically trivial instrument rests on an accurate insight: the computer, used as a number-cruncher (that is, merely as a fast numerical calculator, and it is so used especially in the behavioral sciences), has often, as George
Miller has also pointed out, put muscles on analytic techniques that are more powerful than the ideas those techniques enable one to explore.
(160) We can say in anticipation that the power of a metaphor to yield new insights, depends largely on the richness of the contextual frameworks it fuses, on their potential mutual resonance.

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Performance, simulation, and theory modes of AI work are often conflated, for example Newell and Simon General Problem Solver. (164) Workers in AI tend to think of themselves as working in one of two modes, often called
performance mode and simulation mode.
(165) A third mode of operation should perhaps be mentioned in this context: theory mode.
(167-168) The modern literature on problem solving is punctuated by two important books, George Polyaƒs
How to Solve It and Newellƒs and Simonƒs Human Problem Solving. . . . Heuristics are thus not algorithms, not effective procedures; they are plausible ways of attacking specific problems.

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Protocol taking that is basis of Newell and Simon exemplifies information-processing psychology but not neurophysiology. (169)
Protocol taking, that is, watching other people solve problems, became virtually a hallmark of Newell and Simonƒs procedure.
(170) Information-processing
psychology is, however, not information-processing neurophysiology.
(171) The most ambitious information-processing system that has been built for the purpose of studying human problem-solving behavior as Newell and Simonƒs
General Problem Solver (GPS).
(174) It is the information-processing theory of man which concerns us here, not GPS as such. And we are concerned with that theory precisely because it, in one variation or another, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, underlies almost all the new information-processing psychology and constitutes virtually a dogma for the artificial-intelligence community.
(176) It is precisely this unwarranted claim to universality that demotes their use of the computer, computing systems, programs, etc., from the status of a scientific theory to that of a metaphor.

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Access to external world and acculturation of general vocabulary is key. (178-179) [quoting Newell and Simon] Due account must be taken of the limitations of GPSƒs access to the external world. The initial part of the explicit instructions to GPS have been acquired long ago by the human in building up his general vocabulary. This [information] has to be spelled out to GPS. There, precisely, is where the question is begged. For the real question is, what happens to the whole man as he builds his general vocabulary? How is his perception of what a problem is shaped by the experiences that are an integral part of his acquisition of his vocabulary? How do these experiences shape his perception of what objects, operators, differences, goals, etc., are relevant to any problems he may be facing? And so on. No theory that sidesteps such questions can possibly be a theory of human problem solving.
(180) But the point is precisely that the perversion we might well say perversion of everyday thought by the computer metaphor has turned every problem into a technical problem to which the methods here discussed are thought to be appropriate.

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Example of the house blew it versus blue it reflects internalized English grammar. (185) We all have some criteria, an internalized grammar of the English language, that allow us to tell that the string of words The house blue it is ungrammatical. That is a purely syntactic judgment. On the other hand, we recognize that the sentence The house blew it is grammatical, even though we may have some difficulty deciding what it means, that is, how to understand it. We say we understand it only when we have been able to construct a story within which it makes sense, that is, when we can point to some contextual framework within which the sentence has a meaning, perhaps even an obvious meaning.

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Schank theory proposes specific underlying mechanisms for analyzing natural language utterances. (192) What I wish to emphasize here is that [Roger C.]
Schankƒs theory proposes a formal structure for the conceptual bases underlying linguistic utterances, that it proposes specific mechanisms (algorithms) for basing predictions on such conceptual structures, and that it proposes formal rules for analyzing natural-language utterances and for converting them into the conceptual bases.
(196) Newell, Simon, Schank, and Winograd simply mistake the nature of the problems they believe themselves to be solving. As if they were benighted artisans of the seventeenth century, they present general theories that are really only virtually empty heuristic slogans, and then claim to have verified these theories by constructing models that do perform some tasks, but in a way that fails to give insight into general principles. . . . The most important and far-reaching effect of this failure is that researchers in artificial intelligence constantly delude themselves into believing that the reason any particular system has not come close to realizing AIƒs grand vision is always to be found in the limitations of the specific systemƒs program.

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Philosophical reduction to two questions for AI: formalizability of conceptual bases underlying linguistic understanding, impact of appropriateness of objectives for humans versus machines for understanding. (197) There are then, two questions that must ultimately be confronted. First, are the conceptual bases that underlie linguistic understanding entirely formalizable, even in principle, as Schank suggests and as most workers in AI believe? Second, are there ideas that, as I suggested, no machines will ever understand because they relate to objectives that are inappropriate for machines?
(198) The fact that these questions have become important at all is indicative of the depth to which the information-processing metaphor has penetrated both the academic and the popular mind.
(200) But what is most important in both instances is that the theories be convertible to computer programs.
(200) At best, what we see here is another example of the drunkardƒs search. A theory purports to describe the conceptual structures that underlie all human language understanding. But the only conceptual structures it admits as legitimate are those that can be represented in the form of computer-manipulatable data structures. These are then simply pronounced to constitute all the conceptual structures that underlie all of human thought.

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Alternate reasonable grand goal for AI of individual life extension via machinery in line with media convergence and virtual reality dystopia of The Matrix. (202) Both Simon and Schank have thus given expression to the deepest and most grandiose fantasy that motivates work on artificial intelligence, which is nothing less than to build a machine on the model of man, a robot that is to have its childhood, to learn language as a child does, to gain its knowledge of the world by sensing the world through its own organs, and ultimately to contemplate the whole domain of human thought.
(203) I shall argue that an organism is defined, in large part, by the problems it faces. Man faces problems no machine could possibly be made to face.

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Equivocation with success and intellectual abilities measurable by IQ is large scale social prejudice. (204) The trouble with I.Q. Testing is not that it is entirely spurious, but that it is incomplete. It measures certain intellectual abilities that large, politically dominant segments of western European societies have elevated to the very stuff of human worth and hence to the
sine qua non of success.
(205) Yet forms of the idea that intelligence is measurable along an absolute scale, hence that intelligences are comparable, have deeply penetrated current thought.

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Does it matter whether future states of the art track or deviate from this putative empirical fact? (208) First (and least important), the ability of even the most advanced of currently existing computer systems to acquire information by means other than what Schank called being spoon-fed is still extremely limited.

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Importance of embodiment for humans for ground of experience grounding interests as well as for interpersonal communication. (208-209) Second, it is not obvious that all human knowledge is encodable in information structures, however complex. . . . There are, in other words, some things humans know by virtue of having a human body.
(209) Third . . . there are some things people come to know only as a consequence of having been treated as human beings by other human beings.
(209) The human use of language manifests human memory. And that is a quite different thing than the store of the computer, which has been anthropomorphized into memory. The former gives rise to hopes and fears, for example.

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Socializability of both humans and machines seems to entail there must be fundamental differences as between any set of organic species, for example losing paradise of infancy, although Berry ethic of being a good stream seems to instantiate the machine perspective (Erikson catastrophe). (210) If both machines and humans are socializable, then we must ask in what way the socialization of the human must necessarily be different from that of the machine.
(210) Every organism is socialized by the process of dealing with problems that confront it. The very biological properties that differentiate one species from another also determine that each species will confront problems different from those faced by any other. Every species will, if only for that reason, be socialized differently.
(211) A catastrophe, to use Erik
Eriksonƒs expression for it, that every human being must experience is his personal recapitulation of the biblical story of paradise.

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Logic is only small component of ordinary human thinking, extending by intuition into embodiment beyond the monolithic CPU paradigm, an argument supported by brain hemisphere studies. (214) There is, however, still another assumption that information-processing modelers of man make that may be false, and whose denial severely undermines their program: that there exists one and only one class of information processes, and that every member of that class is reducible to the kind of information processes exemplified by such systems as GPS and Schank-like language-understanding formalisms. Yet every human being has the impression that he thinks at least as much by intuition, hunch, and other such informal means as he does systematically, that is by means such as logic.
(214) Within the last decade or so, however, neurological evidence has begun to accumulate that suggests there may be a scientific basis of the folk wisdom.
(218-219) We learn from the testimony of hundreds of creative people, as well as from our own introspection, that the human creative act always involves the conscious interpretation of messages coming from the unconscious, the shifting of ideas from the left hand to the right, in [Jerome]
Brunerƒs phrase.

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Whole man, whole poking fun at Simon ant getting intelligence from complexity of environment also applying to humans, mysterious spectacle much richer than reduced equivalence in computable logic; dares to invoke unconscious and infant socialization as example of human ability computers cannot simulate, and admits default to Whitehead fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (221) Even calculating reason compels the belief that we must stand in awe of the mysterious spectacle that is the whole man I would even add, that is the whole ant.
(222) The lesson here is rather that the part of the human mind which communicates to us in rational and scientific terms is itself an instrument that disturbs what it observes, particularly its voiceless partner, the
unconscious, between which and our conscious selves it mediates.
(222) We are capable of listening with the third ear, of sensing living truth that is truth beyond any standards of provability. It is
that kind of understanding, and the kind of intelligence that is derived from it, which I claim is beyond the abilities of computers to simulate.
(222-223) But gradually, even slyly, our own minds become infected with what A. N.
Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. We come to believe that these theoretical terms are ultimately interpretable as observations, that in the visible future we will have ingenious instruments capaable of measuring the objects to which these terms refer.

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Shifts to ethical stance against giving computers tasks demanding wisdom. (227) There have been may debates on Computers and Mind. What I conclude here is that the relevant issues are neither technological nor even mathematical; they are ethical. They cannot be settled by asking questions beginning with can. The limits of the applicability of computers are ultimately statable only in terms of oughts. What emerges as the most elementary insight is that, since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.

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Likely disagree with this statement that there are no marketable AI results today; examples of DENTRAL and MACSYMA best he can muster. (229) With few exceptions, there have been no results, from over twenty years of artificial-intelligence research, that have found their way into industry generally or into the computer industry in particular.
(229) Two exceptions are the remarkable programs DENTRAL and MACSYMA that exist at Stanford University and at M.I.T., respectively.
(229-230) DENTRAL interprets outputs of mass spectrometers, instruments used for analyses of chemical molecules. In ordinary practice, chemists in postdoctoral training are employed to deduce the chemical structures of molecules given to this instrument from the so-called mass spectra it produces. . . . Stated in general terms, then, DENTRAL is a program that analyzes mass spectra and produces descriptions of the structures of molecules that, with very high probability, gave rise to these spectra. The programƒs competence equals or exceeds that of human chemists in analyzing certain classes of organic molecules.
(230-231) MACSYMA is, by current standards, an enormously large program for doing symbolic mathematical manipulations.

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Heuristic basis of AI and other programs appeals to ad hoc construction by groups of individuals over long periods; compare to software products like automation systems. (232) But most existing programs, and especially the largest and most important ones, are not theory-based in this way. They are heuristic, not necessarily in the sense that they employ heuristic methods internally, but in that their construction is based on rules of thumb, stratagems that appear to work under most foreseen circumstances, and on other ad hoc mechanisms that are added to them from time to time.
(232) What is much more important, however, is that almost all the very large computer programs in daily use in industry, in government, and in the universities are of this type as well. These gigantic computer systems have usually been put together (one cannot always use the word designed ) by teams of programmers, whose work is often spread over many years. By the time these systems come into use, most of the original programmers have left or turned their attention to other pursuits. It is precisely when such systems begin to be used that their inner workings can no longer be understood by any single person or by a small team of individuals.

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Misattribution that programmer understands every detail of the processes embodied by programs realized by Wiener. (232) Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, foretold this phenomenon in a remarkably prescient article published almost fifteen years ago.
(233) What Norbert Wiener described as a possibility has long since become reality. The reasons for this appear to be almost impossible for the layman to understand or accept. His misconcpetion of what computers are, of what they do, and of how they do what they do is attributable in part to the pervasiveness of the mechanistic metaphor and the depth to which it has penetrated the unconscious of our entire culture. . . . To him [Minsky] computers and computer programs are mechanical in the same simple sense as steam engines and automobile transmissions.

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Legal/bureaucratic view of program formulation appeals to vicissitudes of execution, although lay person believes programmers know every detail and theoretical bases: knowledge is much more sparse and brittle (MacKenzie). (234) Program formulation is thus rather more like the creation of a bureaucracy than like the construction of a machine of the kind Lord Kelvin may have understood.
(235) It is undoubtedly this kind of trust that Minsky urges us to invest in complex artificial-intelligence programs that grow in effectiveness but which come to be beyond our understanding.

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Legitimation of knowledge base of programs that are not understood by their users; fallacy of misplaced concreteness? (236-237) Our societyƒs growing reliance on computer systems that were initially intended to help people make analyses and decisions, but which have long since both surpassed the understanding of their users and become indispensable to them, is a very serious development. . . . And their growth and the increasing reliance placed on them is then accompanied by an increasing legitimation of their knowledge base.
(237) Professor Philip Morrison of M.I.T. wrote a poignant parable on this theme [of seismological world map based only on data collected after 1961 that was digitized].

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Annihilation of historical memory by elimination of data that is not already digitized in standard formats: compare to Ong on destruction of oral cultures. (238) The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the destruction of history. For when society legitimates only those data that are in one standard format and that can easily be told to the machine, then history, memory itself, is annihilated.
(239) Modern technological rationalizations of war, diplomacy, politics, and commerce (such as computer games) have an even more insidious effect on the making of policy. . . . The enormous computer systems in the Pentagon and their counterparts elsewhere in our culture have, in a very real sense, no authors. Thus they do not admit of any questions of right or wrong, of justice, or of any theory with which one can agree or disagree. They provide no basis on which what the machine says can be challenged.

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Despite tranquilizing myths of inevitability and Fromm escape from freedom, there are actors who are obliged to master programming and control of computers; good evidence that philosophy of computing and programming occurred in focus on debugging, yet couches human intentions as a problem of technique. (240) One would expect that large numbers of individuals, living in a society in which anonymous, hence irresponsible, forces formulate the large questions of the day and circumscribe the range of possible answers, would experience a kind of impotence and fall victim to mindless rage. . . . Yet an alternative response is also very pervasive; as seen from one perspective, it appears to be resignation, but from another perspective it is what Erich Fromm long ago called escape from freedom.
(241) Today even the most highly placed managers represent themselves as innocent victims of a technology for which they accept no responsibility and which they do not even pretend to understand. . . . The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it.

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Reason reduced to domination of things, man, and nature; links to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kittler. (249) But these systems are simple in a deeper, and more important sense as well. They have reduced reason itself to only its role in the domination of things, man, and, finally, nature.
(250) In the process of adapting ourselves to these systems, we, even the admirals among us, have castrated not only ourselves (that is, resigned ourselves to impotence), but our very language as well. For now language has become merely another tool, all concepts, ideas, images that artists and writers cannot paraphrase into computer-comprehensible language have lost their function and their potency.

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All social problems treated as technical problems, exemplified by Vietnam war; link to Golumbia, Edwards, procedural rhetoric and videogame criticism. (251-252) When every problem on the international scene is seen by the best and brightest problem solvers as being a mere technical problem, wars like the Viet Nam war become truly inevitable. The recognition of genuinely conflicting but legitimate interests of coexisting societies and such recognition is surely a precondition of conflict resolution or accommodation is rendered impossible from the outset. Instead, the simplest criteria are used to detect differences, to search for means to reduce these differences, and finally to apply operators to present objects in order to transform them into desired objects. It is, in fact, entirely reasonable, if reason means instrumental reason, to apply American military force, B-52ƒs, napalm, and all the rest, to communist-dominated Viet Nam (clearly an undesirable object ), as the operator to transform it into a desirable object, namely, a country serving American interests.

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Computers as fetish and concrete form of Horkheimer eclipse of reason. (252) Horkheimer, long before computers became a fetish and gave concrete form to the eclipse of reason, gave us the needed perspective.
(255) The alternative to the kind of rationality that sees the solution to world problems in psychotechnology is not mindlessness. It is reason restored to human dignity, to authenticity, to self-esteem, and to individual autonomy.
(257) On the other hand, it may be that religion was not addictive at all. Had it been, perhaps God would not have died and the new rationality would not have won out over grace. But instrumental reason, triumphant technique, and unbridled science are addictive.

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Biofeedback movement as proto-bioengineering, stripping power of choice. (259) The now ascendant biofeedback movement may be the penultimate act in the drama separating man from nature; man no longer even senses himself, his body, directly, but only through pointer readings, flashing lights, and buzzing sounds produced by instruments attached to him as speedometers are attached to automobiles.
(259) Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose.

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Routinely do things with computer technology like morally questionable experiments, such as violent video games and pornography; treating everything as an object puts our souls at peril. (260) Is not the overriding obligation on men, including men of science, to exempt life itself from the madness of treating everything as an object, a sufficient reason, and one that does not even have to be spoken?
(261) Our time prides itself on having finally achieved the freedom from censorship for which libertarians in all ages have struggled. . . . But, on closer examination, this victory too can be seen as an Orwellian triumph of an even higher ignorance: what we have gained is a new conformism, which permits us to say anything that can be said in the functional languages of instrumental reason, but forbids us to allude to what Ionesco called the living truth.
(261) If that is so, then those who censor their own speech do so, to use an outmoded expression, at the peril of their souls.

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Attack on human spirit by reduction to functional language, and making decisions that lock future generations into particular technological forms (Stallman on cloud computing). (262) These responsibilities are especially grave since future generations cannot advocate their own cause now. We are all their trustees.
(263) [Marc J.]
Roberts chose to illustrate that scientific hypotheses are not value free by citing the values enter into the scientistƒs choice to tolerate or not to tolerate the potential cost of being wrong.
(265) There simply is a responsibility it cannot be wished away to decide which problems are more important or interesting or whatever than others. Every specific society must constantly find ways to meet that responsibility. The question here is
how, in an open society, these ways are to be found; are they to be dictated by, say, the military establishment, or are they to be open to debate among citizens and scientists?
(265) A central question of knowledge, once won, is its validation; but what we now see in almost all fields, especially in the branches of computer science we have been discussing, is that the validation of scientific knowledge has been reduced to the display of technological wonders.

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Counter dehumanization by social engineering by appealing to personal judgment intrinsic worth; try to get a machine to do this. (266) The individual is
dehumanized whenever he is treated as less than a whole person. The various forms of human and social engineering we have discussed here do just that, in that they circumvent all human contexts, especially those that give real meaning to human language.
(267) This is not an argument for solipsism, nor is it a counsel for every man to live only for himself. But it does argue that every man must live for himself first. For only by experiencing his own intrinsic worth, a worth utterly independent of his use as an instrument, can he come to know those self-transcendent ends that ultimately confer on him his identity and that are the only ultimate validators of human knowledge.

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Strong philosophy of computing and programming positions: no morally repugnant projects, but obscene and irreversible applications should be avoided; the animal experiments and robotic moment have happened. (267) This spirit dictates that I must exhibit some of my own decisions about what I may and may not do in computer science.
(268) There is, in my view, no project in computer science as such that is morally repugnant and that I would advise students or colleagues to avoid.
(268) There are, however, two kinds of computer applications that either ought not be undertaken at all, or, if they are contemplated, should be approached with utmost caution.
(268-269) The first kind I would call simply obscene. . . . The proposal I have mentioned, that an animalƒs visual system and brain be coupled to computers, is an example.
(269-270) I would put all projects that propose to substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love in the same category. . . . The point is (Simon and Colby to the contrary notwithstanding) that there are some human functions for which computers
ought not to be substituted. It has nothing to do with what computers can or cannot be made to do. Respect, understanding, and love are not technical problems.
(270) The second kind of computer application that ought to be avoided, or at least not undertaken without very careful forethought, is that which can easily be seen to have irreversible and not entirely foreseeable side effects. If, in addition, such an application cannot be shown to meet a pressing human need that cannot readily be met in any other way, then it ought not to be pursued.

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Interesting choice of speech recognition as an application to avoid (contrary to Licklider); either too expensive or will lead to surveillance state. (270) The example I wish to cite here is that of the automatic recognition of human speech.
(271) But here we have to remember that the problem is so enormous that only the largest possible computers will ever be able to manage it.
(271) This project then represents, in the eyes of its chief sponsor, a long step toward a fully automated battlefield.
(271-272) But such listening machines, could they be made, will make monitoring of voice communication very much easier than it now is. Perhaps the only reason that there is very little government surveillance of telephone conversations in many countries of the world is that such surveillance takes so much manpower. . . . As a citizen I ask, why should my government spend approximately 2.5 million dollars a year (as it now does) on this project?

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Do computer games and simulations distance or rather permit empathy? (275-276) A second lesson is this. These men were able to give the counsel they gave because they were operating at an enormous psychological distance from the people who would be maimed and killed by the weapons systems that would result form the ideas they communicated to their sponsors. The lesson, therefore, is that the scientist and technologist must, by acts of will and of the imagination, actively strive to reduce such psychological distances, to counter the forces that tend to remove him from the consequences of his actions.
(276) When instrumental reason is the sole guide to action, the acts it justifies are robbed of their inherent meanings and thus exist in an ethical vacuum.

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Civil courage in small contexts of governmentality, especially teachers of computer science; good entry point for critical programming, obligation of the university to do more than train. (276) It is a widely held but a grievously mistaken belief that civil courage finds exercise only in the context of world-shaking events. To the contrary, its most arduous exercise is often in those small contexts in which the challenge is to overcome the fears induced by petty concerns over career, over our relationships to those who appear to have power over us, over whatever may disturb the tranquility of our mundane existence.
(276) And, because this book is, after all, about computers, let that call be heard mainly by teachers of computer science.
(277) He must teach the limitations of his tools as well as their power.
(277) Almost anyone with a reasonably orderly mind can become a fairly good programmer with just a little instruction and practice. . . . Immature students are therefore easily misled into believing that they have truly mastered a craft of immense power and of great importance when, in fact, they have learned only its rudiments and nothing substantive at all.
(278) When such students have completed their studies, they are rather like people who have somehow become eloquent in some foreign language, but who, when they attempt to write something in that language, find they have literally nothing of their own to say.
(278) The function of a university cannot be to simply offer prospective students a catalog of skills from which to choose. . . . Surely the university should look upon each of its citizens, students and faculty alike, first of all as human beings in search of what else to all it?--truth, and hence in search of themselves.
(278) Just because so much of a computer-science curriculum is concerned with the craft of computation, it is perhaps easy for the teacher of computer science to fall into the habit of merely training.
(279) Finally, the teacher of computer science is himself subject to the enormous temptation to be arrogant because his knowledge is somehow harder than that of his humanist colleagues.
(280) Without the courage to confront oneƒs inner as well as oneƒs outer worlds, such wholeness is impossible to achieve. Instrumental reason alone cannot lead to it.

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AI based on bureaucratic subject, guided by shallow research drawn from rationalism and logical empiricism. (198) But its shortcomings are far more mundane: we have not yet been able to construct a machine with even a modicum of common sense or one that can converse on everyday topics in ordinary language.
(199) The basic philosophy that has guided the research is shallow and inadequate had has not received sufficient scrutiny. It is drawn from the traditions of rationalism and logical empiricism but has taken a novel turn away from its predecessors.
(199) I will argue that artificial intelligence as now conceived is limited to a very particular kind of intelligence: one that can usefully be likened to bureaucracy in its rigidity, obtuseness, and inability to adapt to changing circumstances.

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Mathematical modeling replaced with symbolic emphasis, but still simplification. (199) Although Descartes himself did not believe that reason could be achieved through mechanical devices, his understanding laid the groundwork for the symbol-processing machines of the modern age.
(200) The first decades of computing emphasized the application of numerical techniques. . . . The mathematization of experience required simplifications that made the computer results accurate as they might be with respect to the models meaningless in the world.
(200) The developers of artificial intelligence have rejected traditional mathematical modeling in favor of an emphasis on symbolic, rather than numerical, formalisms.

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AI goals of explaining human mental processes as mechanical devices and creating intelligent tools. (201) In building models of mind, there are two distinct but complementary goals. On the one hand is the quest to explain human mental processes as ordinary mechanical devices. On the other hand is the drive to create intelligent tools machines that apply intelligence to serve some purpose, regardless of how closely they mimic the details of human intelligence.
(201) Researchers such as Newell and Simon (two other founding fathers of artificial intelligence) have sought precise and scientifically testable theories of more modest scope than Minsky suggests.

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AI abandoned certainty and truth, building patchwork of micro-truths and employing methodologies that are merely heuristically adequate. (203) Artificial intelligence has abandoned the quest for certainty and truth. The new patchwork rationalism is built on mounds of micro-truths gleaned through commonsense introspection, ad hoc programming, and so-called knowledge acquisition techniques for interviewing experts.
(203) The artificial intelligence methodology does not demand a logically correct answer but one that works sufficiently often to be
heuristically adequate.
(203) Minsky places the blame for lack of success in explaining ordinary reasoning on the rigidity of logic and does not raise the more fundamental questions about the nature of all symbolic representations and of formal (though possibly nonlogical ) systems of rules for manipulating them.

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Intelligence identified with rule-governed symbol-manipulating device, with representation as the essential link. (204) The fundamental principle is the identification of intelligence with the functioning of a rule-governed symbol-manipulating device.
(204) The essential link is
representation the encoding of the relevant aspect of the world. . . . Complete and systematic symbolic representation is crucial to the paradigm. The rules followed by the machine can deal only with the symbols, not their interpretations.

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Simon satisficing supplanted optimizing decision theories for adequate plans of action. (204) He [Simon] supplanted decision theories based on optimization with a theory of
satisficing - effectively using finite decision-making resources to come up with adequate, but not necessarily optimal, plans of action.
(206) The cognitive modeler does not build an overall model of the systemƒs performance on a task but designs the individual rules in the hope that appropriate behavior will emerge from their interaction.
(206) Minsky makes explicit this assumption that intelligence will emerge from computational interactions among a plethora of small pieces.

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Lenat task of encoding all knowledge reflects idea of knowledge as a commodity. (208)
Lenat has embarked on this task of encoding all the worldƒs knowledge down to some level of detail.

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Expert systems for managing processes too complex or rapid for unassisted humans are brittle. (209) Applied AI is widely seen as a means of managing processes that have grown too complex or too rapid for unassisted humans.
(209) It is a commonplace in the field to describe expert systems as brittle - able to operate only within a narrow range of situations.

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Heidegger and phenomenologist challenge to patchwork rationalism: readiness-to-hand versus present-to-hand, decontextualized representation is blind; compare to Suchman and Gee. (210) The hope of patchwork rationalism is that with a sufficiently large body of rules, the thought-through spots will successfully interpolate to the wastelands in between.
(210) To say that all of the worldƒs knowledge could be explicitly articulated in
any symbolic form computational or not), we must assume the possibility or reducing all forms of tacit knowledge (skills, intuition, etc.) to explicit facts and rules. Heidegger and other phenomenologists have challenged this, and many of the strongest criticisms of artificial intelligence are based on the phenomenological analysis of human understanding as a readiness-to-hand of action in the world, rather than as the manipulation of present-to-hand representations.

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Restricted domain required for successful AI; explicit facts always fit within cultural orientation. (212) The most successful artificial intelligence programs have operated in the detached puzzlelike domains of board games and technical analysis, not those demanding understanding of human lives, motivations, and social interaction.
(213) Every explicit representation of knowledge bears within it a background of cultural orientation that does not appear as explicit claims but is manifest in the very terms in which the facts are expressed and in the judgment of what constitutes a fact.

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Comparison between AI techniques and bureaucracy by Lee consonant with other theorists, notably Foucault, from whom the dominant organizational characteristic of the epoch is bureaucratization, even for the conception of the mind, subjectivity, consciousness. (213) [Quoting Lee A Bureaucracy of Intelligence ] Stated simply,
the techniques of artificial intelligence are to the mind what bureaucracy is to human social interaction.

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Problem of client satisfaction mismatch between decontextualized application of rules and human interpretation of symbols appearing in them. (214) Indeed, systems based on symbol manipulation exhibit the rigidities of bureaucracies and are most problematic in dealing with client satisfaction - the mismatch between the decontextualized application of rules and the human interpretation of the symbols that appear in them.
(214) The I just follow the rules of the bureaucratic clerk has its direct analogue in Thatƒs what the knowledge base says.

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Turkle connectionist emergent intelligence different than Minksy emergent intelligence. (215) In this work, each computing element (analogous to a neuron) operates on simple general principles, and intelligence emerges from the evolving patterns of interaction.
(215-216) Connectionism is one manifestation of what
Turkle calls emergent AI. The fundamental intuition guiding this work is that cognitive structure in organisms emerges through learning and experience, not through explicit representation and programming. The problems of blindness and domain limitation described above need not apply to a system that has developed through situated experience.
(216) Connectionism, like its parent cognitive theory, must be placed in the category of brash unproved hypotheses, which have not really begun to deal with the complexities of mind and whose current explanatory power is extremely limited.

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AI assumes mind linguistic down to microscopic level: drawing on hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophies of language, and speech act philosophy, lead to emphasis on embodiment, situatedness, context, social aspects of world creation through language. (216-217) The computer is a physical embodiment of the symbolic calculations envisaged by Hobbes and Liebniz. As such, it is really not a thinking machine, but a
language machine. The very notion of symbol system is inherently linguistic, and what we duplicate in our programs with their rules and propositions is really a form of verbal argument, not the workings of mind. . . . artificial intelligence has operated with the faith that mind is linguistic down to the microscopic level.
(217) We begin with some fundamental questions about what language is and how it works. In this, we draw on work in hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) and phenomenology, as developed by Heidegger and
Gadamer, along with the concepts of language action developed from the later works of Wittgenstein through the speech act philosophy of Austin, Searle, and Habermas.

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Suggests Heim computer as component objectives including medical reference, language structure detection, tracking associations like cookies and other web tracking technologies. (218-219) We are already beginning to see a movement away from the early vision of computers replacing human experts. . . . The rules can be thought of as constituting an automated textbook, which can access and logically combine entries that are relevant to a particular case. The goal is to suggest and justify possibilities a doctor might not otherwise have considered.
(219) Another opportunity for design is in the regularities of the structure of language use. . . . The theory of such conversations has been develpoed as the basis for a computer program called The Coordinator, which is used for facilitating and organizing computer-message conversations in an organization.
(219-220) Rather than seeing the computer as working with objectified refined knowledge, it can serve as a way of keeping track of how the representations emerge from interpretations: who created them in what context and where to look for clarification.

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Questioning engages projection of human image onto machine then back onto human; in AI tradition, language activity onto symbolic manipulations of machine, then back into human mind as language of thought. (220) In asking this kind of question, we engage in a kind of projection understanding humanity by projecting an image of ourselves onto the machine and the image of the machine back onto ourselves. In the tradition of artificial intelligence, we project an image of our language activity onto the symbolic manipulations of the machine, then project that back onto the full human mind.

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Ontological designing has practical impact on artifacts as well as for humanities inquiry. (552) The most important designing is ontological. . . . In creating new artifacts, equipment, buildings, and organizational structures, it attempts to specify in advance how and where breakdowns will show up in our everyday practices and in the tools we use, opening up new spaces in which we can work and play.
(552) The concluding sections of this chapter will discuss the ontical-ontological significance of design how our tools are part of the background in which we can ask what it is to be human.

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Readiness-to-hand sought in ontologically clean language design. (553) Phenomenologically, you are driving down the road, not operating controls. The long evolution of the design of automobiles has led to this readiness-to-hand. It is not achieved by having a car communicate like a person, but by providing the right coupling between the driver and action in the relevant domain (motion down the road). In designing computer tools, the task is harder but the issues are the same.
(553) The programmer designs the languages that creates the world in which the user operates. This language can be ontologically clean or it can be a jumble of related domains. A clearly and consciously organized ontology is the basis for the kind of simplicity that makes systems usable.

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Anticipation of breakdown crucial in system design. (553) A breakdown reveals the nexus of relations necessary for us to accomplish our task. This creates a clear objective for design to anticipate the forms of breakdown and provide a space of possibilities of action when they occur.
(554) In designing computer systems and the domains they generate, we must anticipate the range of occurrences that go outside the normal functioning and provide means both to understand them and to act.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (554) 20131019c 0 -2+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Desire for attention to possibilities created and eliminate during design (Feenberg). (554) The designer is engaged in a conversation for possibilities. Attention to the possibilities being eliminated must be in a constant interplay with expectations for the new possibilities being created.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (555) 20131019d 0 -4+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Conversational structure of business organization linked to regular patterns of triggering and breakdown: creating tools means designing new conversations and connections; link to Spinuzzi weaving and splicing net work. (555) When a change is made, the most significant innovation is the modification of the conversation structure, not the mechanical means by which the conversation is carried out (e.g., a computer system versus a manual one based on forms). In making such changes we alter the overall pattern of conversation, introducing new possibilities or better anticipating breakdowns in the previously existing ones.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (556) 20131109 0 -6+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Design should not attempt to be formal and fully covering, instead as additions and changes to network of equipment that includes people (Kitchin and Dodge). (556) No methodology can guarantee that all such possibilities will be found, but a careful analysis of the conversation structure can help reveal conversations with a potential for expansion. In designing computer-based devices, we are not in the position of creating a formal- system that covers the functioning of the organization and the people within it. . . . Instead we design additions and changes to the network of equipment (some of it computer-based) within which people work.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (556) 20131109a 0 -3+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Space of potential breakdown and action basis of present-at-hand world of objects; software development cycles between design to experience. (556) But even in these sedimented cases, it is important to recognize that ultimately the present-at-hand world of objects is always based on the breakdown of action.
(556) This grounding of description in action pervades all attempts to formalize the world into a linguistic structure of objects, properties, and events. This also leads us to the recognition that the development of any computer-based system will have to proceed in a cycle from design to experience and back again.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (557) 20131109b 0 -1+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Everything exists as interpretation within a background, as breakdowns make manifest. (557) satisfaction is determined not by the world but by a declaration on the part of the requestor that a condition is satisfied.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (557) 20131109c 0 -1+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Computers as too for communication; computerization pejorative. (557) Computerization in its pejorative sense occurs with devices that were designed without appropriate consideration of the conversational structures they engender (and those that they consequently preclude).

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (558) 20131019e 0 -1+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Design is always happening, with or without articulated theory. (558) Design always proceeds, with or without an articulated theory, but we can work to improve its course and its results.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (558) 20131019f 0 -10+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Effective tools created when computers applied appropriately to systematic domains like finance, word processing, and profession-oriented domains. (558) Computers are wonderful devices for the rule-governed manipulation of formal representations, and there are many areas of human endeavor in which such manipulation are crucial. In applying computers appropriately to systematic domains we develop effective tools.
(558) One of the most obvious is the numbers representing financial entities and transactions. . . . Another widespread example is word processing.
(559) A profession-oriented domain makes explicit aspects of the work that are relevant to computer-aided tools and can be general enough to handle a wide range of what is done within a profession, in contrast to the very specialized domains generated in the design of a particular computer system. A systematic domain is a structured formal representation that deals with things the professional already knows how to work with, providing for precise and unambiguous description and manipulation. The critical issue is its correspondence to a domain that is ready-to-hand for those who will use it.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (559) 20131109d 0 -4+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Communication a process of commitment and interpretation, not transmitting symbols. (559) Communication is not a process of transmitting information or symbols, but one of commitment and interpretation. A human society operates through the expression of request and promises among its members. There is a systematic domain relevant to the structure of this network of commitments: a domain of conversation for action that can be represented and manipulated in the computer.
(559) In all situations where systematic domains are applicable, a central (and often difficult) task is to characterize the precise form and relevance of the domain within a broader orientation.

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New devices or systematic domains can create new ways of being; limit of phenomenology and need for degree experimentation conducted by Derrida, Ulmer, OGorman. (560) There is a circularity here: the world determines what we can do and what we do determines our world. The creation of a new device or systematic domain can have far-reaching significance it can create new ways of being that previously did not exist and a framework for actions that would not have previously made sense.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (560) 20131019h 0 -1+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Maturana plasticity of cognitive system key, giving power of structural coupling. (560) In [Humberto] Maturanaƒs terms, the key to cognition is the plasticity of the cognitive system, giving it the power of structural coupling.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (560) 20131019i 0 -3+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Machine coaching for new possibilities for interpretation and action. (560) On the other hand, where there is a danger that is an opportunity. We can create computer systems whose use leads to better domains of interpretation. The machine can convey a kind of coaching in which new possibilities for interpretation and action emerge.

4 2 1 (+) [-4+]mCQK winograd_flores-using_computers (561) 20131019j 0 -3+ progress/2012/06/notes_for_winograd_flores-using_computers.html
Recognition that unknown, unpredictable changes triggered by our actions prevent objective, external observation; work revealing also a source of concealment, such as Heideggerian Enframing. (561) Our actions are the perturbations that trigger the changes, but the nature of those changes is not open to our prediction or control. We cannot even be fully aware of the transformation that is taking place: as carriers of a tradition we cannot be objective observers of it. Our continuing work toward revealing it is at the same time a source of concealment.


select Chapter, Heading, SubHeading, InterstitialSequence, RelevanceLevel, TextName, PositionStart, TimestampBookmarkExtra, CitationOffset, CitationSentences, Path, Lexia from Notes where Chapter=4 and Heading=2 and (SubHeading=0 or SubHeading=1) and (InterstitialSequence=0 or InterstitialSequence=100) order by Heading, SubHeading, InterstitialSequence desc, RelevanceLevel desc, TextName, cast((trim(leading '(' from substring_index(PositionStart, '-', 1))) as unsigned)

5.1 working code places

TOC 5.1 working code places+

5.2 programming philosophers

TOC 5.2 programming philosophers+

5.3 symposia, ensoniment

TOC 5.3 symposia, ensoniment+

5.4 tapoc, flossification

TOC 5.4 tapoc, flossification+

5.5 pmrek, machine embodiment

6.1 recommendations

TOC 6.1 recommendations+

6.2 future directions


TOC

Works To Cite

AuthorTitleStartedRelLatestReadNotesMLAhours
barkerwriting_software_documentation02 20118.402013090890%25%Y0
beck_and_adresextreme_programming_explained_second_edition09 20138.40201309090%0%Y16
brooksmythical_man_month04 20138.402013091290%25%Y4
feller_et_alperspectives_on_free_and_open_source_software06 20078.402013103075%25%Y16
himanenhacker_ethic11 20138.402013110175%25%Y10
kemeny_kurtzback_to_basic05 20148.402014050590%5%Y6
kernighan_ritchiec_programming_language10 20138.40201310015%5%Y14
knuthliterate_programming03 20148.40 0%0%Y15
knuthselected_papers_on_computer_science03 20148.40201403095%5%Y15
knuth_and_pardoearly_development_of_programming_languages09 20138.402014010990%25%Y8
lammersprogrammers_at_work04 20128.402013110490%50%Y8
levyinsanely_great09 20138.402014011390%25%Y4
mayerteaching_and_learning_computer_programming04 20118.402013110525%25%Y12
oram_wilsonbeautiful_code02 20148.402014042725%25%Y16
papertmindstorms09 20138.40201311075%5%Y12
raymondcathedral_and_bazaar10 20148.40201410265%5%Y4
shasha_lazereout_of_their_minds10 20138.402013100150%5%Y16
stallmanfree_software_free_society06 20078.402013110875%25%Y6
stroustrupdesign_and_evolution_of_cpp10 20138.402014041150%25%Y8
takhteyevcoding_places12 20138.402014010290%5%Y8
torvaldsjust_for_fun10 20138.402013102575%25%Y6
von_neumanncomputer_and_brain05 20128.40201311095%5%Y12
weinbergpsychology_of_computer_programming02 20148.402014033190%75%Y2
yeatsrole_for_technical_communicators_in_oss_development08 20128.40 75%0%Y4
Items [24] Research Remaining [222] Refinement Remaining [222]