“In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.Personally, I trust that we can find a way to use both deep reading and Google power to shape our thoughts. I will be interested in what others think.
If we lose those quiet spaces…we will sacrifice something important not only in our- selves but in our culture.”
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Computer Brain
The land of blogs takes me at times to some interesting and inviting places. Such was the case today when I read Larry Hollen’s comments about a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly. I had to follow the link to it and read for myself about what the Internet is doing to our brains. I really think there may be some truth in it when I think about my own current scattered reading habits. I just thought it was a matter of aging. Also, I have found that I have to compose my thoughts on a keyboard versus the once favored yellow tablet. Apparently as we increasingly use a computer a different kind of thinking process is beginning to shape us and one wonders where this is leading us. The author, Nicholas Carr theorizes that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” Being of a generation that values reading, I tend to agree with this observation included within the article:
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2 comments:
It frightens me to think that intellegence itself has never before been tested as a tool beneficial for long term survival.
Intelligence without wisdom could just end up being the cancer of the universe. Now, before we have had time to understand our own minds and how they might be like the mind of God, we have introduced artificial intelligence that can geometrically progressively increase itself. The complicated combination of intelligence and artificial intelligence drive each other to stay one step ahead of the Joneses. The resulting man/machine cold war will be much harder to defuse than the bombs of Communism.
The machines could one day very easily just bill us to death, or automated draft us into ruin.
The old oral traditon carried with it a tradition of wisdom. Memorize everything that may aid survival. Evaluate everything memorized. Repeat what is necessary for each event, and know when to keep your mouth shut. How much wisdom can there be in turning over powerful artificial intelligence to children every day without the possibility of wise counsel? Whatever instructions we give our children for using the computer as a tool, are all lies. We don't know the truth. It has never been established in this experiment. Just like fast foods and supermarkets remove eating from the natural order, artificial intelligence removes us from the natural order of wisdom. Given our penchant for using up every resource we can find for profit, if artificial intelligence ever does aid us in our quest to explore other worlds, intelligence must be wise to avoid becoming the cancer of the universe. We are all on the outskirts of a whole new concept of sin, one that forces us to think cosmically of sin. We may soon be able to sin against more than each other. Thinking about sin on a cosmic level just might be the path that leads us to our salvation from artificial intelligence. Now would be a good time to start. God knew what man was ultimately capable of and provided instructions accordingly. If you have a service manual, refer to it. LOL Tom
I will respond at greater length later, but let me just say for now that we can all relax. Certainly in my lifetime intelligence safe from the challenge of artificial intelligence. Tom is with us. God is good!
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