Monthly Archives: October 1997

Machinery of the Mind

By lytspeed Posted in Computers, Opinion, Reading, Reviews, Science Leave a reply

Machinery of the Mind

By: George Johnson

Type: Non-fiction survey of AI

Setting: N/A

Description:

During a year of intensive study, George Johnson travelled around the country to conventions, interviewed prominent researchers in the field of cognitive science and read just about everything there is to read on the use of machines to model human intelligence. 

Comments:

Although a few years out of date, Johnson’s book is still a fresh, easy to understand look at the advances in the new science of artificial intelligence (or cognitive science, as some researchers prefer to call it.) Johnson is a good writer, and is obviously an intelligent man. He understands the concepts presented in his book, even though the knowledge comes from many different fields, all of which meet at the center of cognitive science. MotM makes a valient effort to present different sides of the artificial intelligence issue, devoting time to the “engineers,” the people concerned with presenting a working product that doesn’t necessarily have to model human intelligence, and the “scientists,” the heavy-hitters in the AI world who are trying to accurately model the workings of the human mind, whether it is practical or not. I got the impression that Johnson favors the pure research side more than the commercial aspects. 

Recommendations:

This is a great introductory text to artificial intelligence research. I wish I had had it when I started reading Gödel, Escher, Bach many years ago!.

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics

By lytspeed Posted in Opinion, Reading, Reviews, Science Leave a reply

Alice in Quantumland:  An Allegory of Quantum Physics

By: Robert Gilmore

Type: Allegory

Setting: Quantumland

Description:

We follow the adventures of Alice as she tours Quantumland and meets up with such strange individuals as the Classical and Quantum Mechanics, scores of electrons and other subatomic particles and scientific principles (and principals!) 

Comments:

Lewis Carroll meets Werner Heisenberg and the gang. Throw in a pinch of The Phantom Tollbooth and season heavily with Gödel, Escher, Bach and Voila! Imagine being introduced to the worlds of Newtonian and particle physics in an Alice in Wonderland setting. That is what Gilmore’s book is all about. He remained true to the spirit of the original Through the Looking Glass, which Lewis Carroll wrote as an excercise in mathematics and logic for his neice, Alice. This book is also designed to educate, and it does a fine job of explaining some of the tougher aspects of modern physics.

Particularly enlightening are Gilmore’s descriptions of subatomic particles and the gedankenexperiment in which we learn that electron spin information is transferred seemingly instantaneously when one electron’s spin is measured. He also does well in introducing the theory that matter is merely a subcategory of energy, and that it is more accurate to say that energy is conserved in all reactions, rather than mass. Evidently, photons and other subatomic particles are created and destroyed constantly, but the sum total of the energy in the reaction is always the same, even if some mass has been created or destroyed. 

Recommendations:

If you are interested in understanding modern physics, but can’t get past the technical jargon or math, this book provides an excellent way to visualize the processes through metaphor.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

By: Robert Pirsig

Type: Philosophical Novel

Setting: The highways and backroads of the north central United States, as well as the cerebral roads of Mind and Memory

Description:

Pirsig takes us on a mental and physical journey into what makes up the realms of Quality and balance, whether those entities are definable (if they even need to be), and how to strive for them. Beautifully interlaced with the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of the story are scenes involving Pirsig and his son, Chris, which provide us with character sketches and the reminder that the people in the story are all too human, despite Pirsig’s lofty ideals. The sketches also serve to show us that being human isn’t all that bad. Keeping in mind that Chris was murdered outside a Buddhist temple many years after the book was written adds an eerie feeling to the exchanges between father and son, as well. 

Comments:

Zen is the kind of book you can reread several times and still get something new out of it each time. It changes levels with you as you learn, and I suspect that is why it continues to be a classic book of modern light philosophy. It is not always easy to like Pirsig’s characterization of himself; some of the things he does and says are inconsistent, but the reason becomes apparent as the book progresses. The book leaves you with the feeling that you can’t tell how much of it it is based in truth and how much isn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is to teach people that they can accept responsibility for their actions and can learn how to keep their bodies and minds in good repair, just like a good motorcycle. Our Selves need maintenance just like our machines do, and Pirsig gives us a few wrenches to work with, as well as showing us what happens when we let ourselves slip out of balance. 

Recommendations:

Though not for everyone, this book is ideal for young adults looking to find a path to follow after their college or high school lives are over. Zen is also useful for those of us who feel we have lost our sense of ourselves, those who thought we knew ourselves well only to find that we have a few surprises left.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go

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To Your Scattered Bodies Go

By: Philip José Farmer

Type: Novel

Setting: An alternate universe; Riverworld

Description:

All human beings that have ever inhabited Earth are thrown together on the banks of a great river in an alternate dimension, intermixed by time period and race. Death is transitory, and does not offer a way out for these people. We follow the exploits of Sir Richard Burton (yes, that Sir Richard Burton) as he assumes leadership of a small band of people and tries to discover who is behind this grand experiment. 

Comments:

This is the first of the famous Riverworld books, which have a devoted following among science fiction fans world wide. For some reason, I had always passed over the series, and when I finally decided to read it recently I expected a grand story full of action and historical references.

The story does have all of that, but it did not strike me as the sweeping classic that its reputation promises. Most importantly, I did not feel like I wanted to continue the series after reading Scattered. Part of the problem for me was that I did not like the main character. Yes, he seems to be historically accurate, and I can accept that the book might be representative of his actions if he were placed in that kind of a fantastic setting, but I did not identify with him. Nor did I care greatly what happened to him. I have read other books with main characters that I did not like (see The Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson), but at least I was interested in their welfare. In this book, I didn’t care whether Burton lived or died.

As I read, I kept remembering flashes of Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. To me, that book was much more interesting, even though it had a similar setup. One thing that helped is that Silverlockcarried a liberal sprinkling of humor, which Scattered seems to ignore for the most part. In a sense, Farmer takes his book to seriously, while Myers makes it a point not to. 

Recommendations:

I must have missed something in this book. Too many intelligent people have said that this is one of the greats. Perhaps simply taking it out of context of the series is a mistake. I will continue with the series, but not until after I read a few other things.

Based on this, I recommend giving the book a try, even though I didn’t really like it. Better yet, read it and Silverlock (if you can find it) and then compare the two.

Starquake

By lytspeed Posted in Opinion, Reading, Reviews, Science Leave a reply

Starquake

By: Robert L. Forward

Type: Hard Science Fiction

Setting: A neutron star near the end of the constellation Draco

Description:

This book is a sequel to Dragon’s Egg, a wonderful speculation about life on a neutron star. In this installment, human scientists face the challenge of trying to help and rescue the civilization of Cheela on the surface of the neutron star in the aftermath of a gigantic starquake. The trick is that the Cheela, due to their small size and nucleonic nature, live roughly a million times faster than the humans do. The entire novel spans twenty-four of the human crew’s hours, so Forward spends much of his time describing the goings on with the Cheela. Many of their generations pass in the day that the humans spend on the ship. 

Comments:

Although theoretically and scientifically as brilliant as his previous novel, Starquake lacks some of the good writing and wit present in Dragon’s Egg. Occasionally, the reader catches a pun relating to Earth television shows and history, but for the most part the parallels are too close. In one case, a barbarian Cheela adopts the name Attila and proceeds to dominate the known surface of the star. The Cheela obviously got the idea to use Earth names from the logs of Earth history that they had received from the humans, but Forward shouldn’t have needed to resort to those tactics for characterization. His writing is good enough to allow the Cheela characters their own names. Some of the borrowed names are obviously used for humor (like the Cheela named Otis-Elevator), but these uses are not necessary. They did not happen this much in Dragon’s Egg, and that story was quite gripping. Forward’s readers are not stupid; if they can sit through his detailed explanations of plant and animal life on the star, they can draw their own parallels between the Dark Ages of Earth and the Dark Ages on Egg. 

Recommendations:

This is a good, mostly solid novel that should delight the remaining fans of hard science fiction. I’m not entirely convinced that it needed to be written, however. Dragon’s Egg stood well on its own; I suspect that publishers had a lot to say about the existence of the sequel.