Computers:
The Past
+ Future
Scroll down to explore.
"But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself.
It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and
complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and process had come
to mean the progress of the Machine."
- "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Foster
What does a computer mean to you?
The first successful chess program capable of playing on a 6x6 board was coded on the MANIAC I at Los Alamos.
British mathematician, Alan Turing, proposes the Turing Test
that tells if a computer can reason like a human.
Most computers could understand programs - piles
of instructions. Programs are like the thoughts that
computers have.
Marvin Minsky wrote an article for the Scientific Journal in which he stated that "Today, machines solve problems mainly according to the principles we build into them. Before long, we may learn how to set them up to work upon the very special problem of improving they air capacity to solve problems. Once a certain threshold is passed, this could lead to a spiral of acceleration, and it may be hard to perfect a reliable "governor" to restrain it."
The smallest computer, the CDC_449, weighed 13 pounds. It couldn't do much besides the limited tasks it was required to do as an onboard computer for
Grumman planes.
Dr. Louis T. Milic produced poems using computers that mathematically analyze the prose and verse of great writers. This poem is from the computer's mimicry of William Blake:
You were happy with your foe
And your puny job did glow
Your foe relieved with joy
And you renewed the foolish ploy
We were angry at our foe
And our holy wrath did flow
Our foe received our wrath
And we returned the foolish math
How will computers evolve over time?
Time Magazine named the digital computer "Man of the Year."
Lots of our questions remain unresolved.
A computer will always be a computer. There's no possible
way it can ever feel sentient... but computers have the capability to mimic so well that we will not know
the difference.
All computers are able to pass the Turing Test.
closer to the end.
Computers serve as companions and communicate with
a high level of emotional artificial intelligence.
Or the beginning, maybe.
"They say that although man should become to the machines what the horse and dog are to us, yet that he will continue to exist,
and will probably be better off in a state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than in his present wild
condition. We treat our domestic animals with much kindness. We give them whatever we believe to be the best for them; and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has
increased their happiness rather than detracted from it. In like manner there is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence
their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours." -Samuel Butler