FYI
You will note there were additional presentations given at the
"Congressional testimony on the digital future" that others may find
interesting - Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Hawking, etc. - though I cannot
find transcripts on the Congressional "Thomas" server (or anywhere
via the Google queries I've tried).
Also - currently still on the Slashdot home page are two other
citations likely of interest to this group:
1) Brief article on progress in Europe legislating "Open Access" to
the scientific literature into law:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/03/02/0158208.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6404429.stm
2) Marvin Minsky discussing his new work on consciousness ("It's
2001. Where's Hal?") - also available in pre-print & gedanken
document form on his web page at CSAIL
part 1: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=197700609
part 2: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=197700610
part 3: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=197700612
Be patient with the links - it can take as long as 10 minutes for
the Flash-based audio player to kick in (but it does eventually come
on).
This is given in Dr. Minsky's inimitable loquacious colloquial
style.
He gives a very nice plug to Semantic Web Technology far into part
2 (to paraphrase - "an excellent means to represent information on
topics where our understanding is still quite poor"). I expect many
at MIT CSAIL have heard most of this - or contributed directly
through discussions with Dr. Minsky - but others may find it equally
informative and entertaining.
One of the many anecdotes he recounts was in response to a question
regarding essentially what others may know as the "extropian"
movement - will we soon be able to encapsulate conscienciousness as a
collection of synaptic network connections amongst exquisitely
nuanced neuronal cell models so as to provide any individual's
consciousness with immortality?" He answered with an annecdote
regarding a talk he gave on longevity. He found most folks were not
much interested in longevity and decided to take some straw poles of
his audiences to find out why. When a "general" audience was asked,
"if you could live to 200, would you want to?" The answers were
uniformly "No" - "I'd be too decrepit to have much quality of life".
Then he re-phrased the question - "If you could preserve all you
cognitive power and place it in a body coming from any point along
your life line of your choosing that would never get "decrepit" would
you want to live 500 years?" The answer again was "No. I've done
most of the things I wanted to do in my current life. I just end up
sitting around for 400 years immensely bored." He then asked the
same questions to "nerds" - e.g., academics and engineers of various
persuasions - and the answer was - "Yes. I work on this particular
geometric problem in the theory of knots that other mathematicians
have worked on for a few hundred years. If I just had another 200
years, I'm certain I could solve it." This was his explanation for
why certain folks appear to desire to live indefinitely long lives.
His answer to this was we should focus more on why games seem so
important and entertaining to humans - that we need to better
understand why. "No one wants 200 years of small talk (not the
computer language) - let's given them something better."
Many long years ago (just a few prior to when 'Society of Mind' was
published - around the time he, Danny Hillis and others were heavily
invested in the Connection Machine) I made what appeared to my fellow
students and professors the outlandish suggestion we invite Dr.
Minsky (a researcher in "common sense theories of mind") to the
weekly Center for Neurobiology & Behavior speaker's series at
Columbia U./CPMC. The speaker's list generally consisted at that
time (mid 80's) of pioneers in the burgeoning fields of cellular &
molecular neurobiology, as well as researchers studying higher level
function such as motor control and space mapping in the brain. Given
the speaker's series invitation procedure took a very democratic and
socratic orientation - each grad student in the program got to select
1 speaker/year to add to the list - my suggestion was reluctantly
accepted. The lecture room where these talks were given was a rather
old one overlooking the Hudson in the New York Pyschiatric institute
Annex located just below the GW Bridge. As it turns out, I believe
Dr. Minsky had spent some time in his earlier life in the nearby
Bronx region of the NYC. He spent a considerable amount of time
during the talk wandering over to the windows by one end of the
lecture stage looking out the window at the bridge, the river, and
the Jersey shore. For some reason, there was an upright piano always
standing down the far end of what was essentially a standard lecture
auditorium apron stage. Dr. Minsky turned out to be the only speaker
- at least during my tenure there - who was able to self-assemble the
audience for his talk - while people were still wandering in -
chatting - finding seats - by playing what if I remember correctly
were some Chopin etudes on the piano. He then went on to give a
fascinating talk (to me) that pretty much summarized what was to soon
appear in 'The Society of Mind' - really a topic very much of
interest to most folks in that lecture hall. I also then had the
great good fortune (as just a kid in grad school) to have lunch with
Dr. Minsky and a few other students and then hand him over to a
family member (his brother, I believe) who looked and spoke very much
like Dr. Minsky himself. It's quite a cherished memory in my
"collection of synaptic network connections amongst exquisitely
nuanced neuronal cells".
Cheers,
Bill
On Mar 1, 2007, at 6:10 PM, Eric Neumann wrote:
FYI...
Testimony of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee CSAIL Decentralized
Information Group Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Before the United States House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2007/03/01-ushouse-future-of-the-web.html
Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer
Laboratory for Bioimaging & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)
Please Note: I now have a new email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
