111–120 of 127 posts
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That sounds a bit dangerous to the lay person...
Anything that makes a good propulsion system for a space ship is a bit dangerous.
I suspect that it is easy to fixate on fantasies of massive technological leaps forward, because the truly revolutionary changes that underpin our lives are like air: so common that we overlook them all the time. If you were to sit down with a person from, say, 1750, and wanted to explain the modern world, you would probably tell them about things like antibiotics, cars and planes, snapchat, that sort of thing. All t…
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I think we over-emphasize elements that seem more “technological,” overestimate their importance. The printing press example is great. We credit the press because it’s mechanical and complex, but not the paper (or ink or literacy or religion). For peaches in winter, most people think of botany, refrigeration, airplanes… science. Fewer people would think of joint stock companies or shipping containers as important ena…
From the Industrial Revolution, we got interchangeable parts and standardization. I think those really had some of the largest impacts on society.
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Other than the idioms, that's a pretty good literal translation. Definitely understandable. I agree machine translation is weaker than human translation, but I don't understand your mockery of this example.
Outside of the grammar, the translation is pretty bad. It flubbed the main metaphor and didn't even get the prelude. This shows exactly why machine translation is bad. It doesn't actually understand anything. It does really well translating very commonly occurring phrases and grammar because it is based on parallel texts. It does absolutely terrible when one wanders outside this "mainstream". This is why you need a h…
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I believe this is the story with Cutie (nickname for QT-1) who invents a religion to justify its existence. The amusing thing was that the rituals of its religion consisted of making sure the space colony functioned properly, so the humans decided to leave the robot's faith alone. And the robot thought that the humans were mindless religious fools for believing in Earth: """The robot approached softly and there was s…
Wait a minute, doesn't the first law requires Cutie to prevent humans to dissolve themselves?
I suspect that it is easy to fixate on fantasies of massive technological leaps forward, because the truly revolutionary changes that underpin our lives are like air: so common that we overlook them all the time. If you were to sit down with a person from, say, 1750, and wanted to explain the modern world, you would probably tell them about things like antibiotics, cars and planes, snapchat, that sort of thing. All t…
> so common that we overlook them all the time. And this reminds me of the definition of "progress" that goes something like this: All the things you can do (or accomplish) without thinking. This would apply to so many things that, as you say, we overlook: Making phone calls or video calls and not worrying about all the servers, cables, wireless technology, audio components, processors, and more that comes to togethe…
This is probably a myth. Studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies likely spent between 20 and 40 hours per week obtaining food. They are still believed to have been plagued by high infant mortality, disease, and warfare, so they were still leading relatively unstable lives when compared with today. But the average hunter-gatherer may have largely been better off (healthier, with more leisure time) than the average worker during the Industrial Revolution.
While we're near the topic, the five-day work week itself is something that a lot of us take for granted, but it has only been adopted nationwide in America for 80 years.
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Wait a minute, doesn't the first law requires Cutie to prevent humans to dissolve themselves?
I think the point of the story was that Cutie could follow orders and prevent harm properly without conscious knowledge of its doing so. Though it consciously believes the humans are going to dissolve themselves, its unconscious circuitry knows otherwise. Does that make sense? Or maybe it's just a plot hole. But I think the purpose of the story is to point out that Cutie can follow all the laws of robotics without re…
More generally, I never spot a story where robots have unconscious cognitive processes. It seems everything they do is deliberate, even though the humans around them don't fully understand what is thinking on.
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There's an argument it inspired the internet or caused us to create it.
Well, if it managed to inspire the creation of the Internet a decade after Cerf et all actually created it, that is truly remarkable!
"In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide Web), after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks "[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?" (269)."
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Well, if it managed to inspire the creation of the Internet a decade after Cerf et all actually created it, that is truly remarkable!
Sorry, not well said. Via Wikipedia: "In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide Web), after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks "[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?" (269)."