Post 3 - Mechanical Computation vs Cognitive Association

When connecting the readings, most of us, I assume, connected them by meaning. As cognitive association works in our brain, so is information in this vastly accessible, (debatably) infinite, library of information. In "As We May Think", Vannevar Bush goes in depth into the description.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature. Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency.

Computers are, in ways, storage houses to mechanically process information that we cannot. An interesting distinction made by Gleik was the difference between mechanical and human function. A computer might be able to store obscene amounts of memory and calculate impossibly fast, but only the human brain can create the original, spontaneous ideas that go into the information, and organize it by meaning.

"Only the fearful and superstitious imagined that machines could be creative or original or spontaneous; those qualities were opposite to mechanical, which meant automatic, determined, and routine," (Gleik ch7, pg 1-2).

Ironically, this fear is becoming more and more plausible with the incredible increase in technological innovation. In fact, Artificial Intelligence is becoming extremely advanced. The limits, however, are that computers will still rely totally on the creative input that is provided by human originality. We continue to use technology as a tool to not only extend our memory, but preserve those memories that fade. In ways, computers have given us not only an ability to have wider range of access to information, but also expression.

“'For the first time the snapshot album provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its activities. . . . For the first time in history there exists an authentic visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made without [literary] interpretation or bias.'5 In this way, the Kodak camera and film were technologies of expression. The pencil or paintbrush was also a technology of expression, of course. But it took years of training before they could be deployed by amateurs in any useful or effective way. With the Kodak, expression was possible much sooner and more simply," (Lessig, pg 47).