|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
The Future of Post-Human Computing: A Preface to a New Theory of Hardware, Software and the Mind
CISP - Cambridge International Science Publishing, May 2011, Pages: 530
Is computing really so promising that, as Marwin Minsky (1967) optimistically predicted in 1967, '[w]ithin a generation…the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved'? (D. Crevier 1993)
This flattering promise of computing by Minsky had received a severe beating by history, in that, more than a generation later, by 2000's, 'the failed promises of…AI…continue to haunt AI research, as the New York Times reported in 2005: 'Computer scientists and software engineers avoided the term artificial intelligence for fear of being viewed as wild-eyed dreamers.'' (WK 2011; J. Markoff 2005; EC 2007; P. Tascarella 2006)
But we do not need to side with either of these opposing views about computing (and other claims as will be discussed in the book), since computing (in relation to hardware and software) is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe.
This challenge to the different conventional views about computing does not suggest, however, that computing has no future, or that those fields of study (related to computing) like psychology, physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, sociology, economics, and so on have made no contribution to its advance. Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.
Rather, this book provides an alternative (better) way to understand the future of computing, especially in the dialectic context of hardware and software-while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). In other words, this book offers a new theory (that is, the supersession theory of computing) to go beyond the existing approaches in the literature on computing in an original way.
If successful, this seminal project is to fundamentally change the way that we think about computing, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what Ithe author originally called its 'post-human' fate.
|
|
|
|
