CRDM 701
Week 12 - Christin
OK, you all already know that I?m a programmer. I know C++, I wish I knew Java, and that?s probably why Hayles? discussion on code both intrigued and frustrated me. First of all, a point that I have to make because it always frustrates me to no end: Hayles writes about HTML as if it is a programming language. It?s not and many hardcore computer programmers out there will get quite upset if you try to treat it as such. There is a very big difference between a markup language (which is what HTML is) and a programming language and Hayles actually talks about one aspect that sets the two apart ? compiling. HTML does not need to be compiled. It?s part of the reason why, I think, that HTML can be taught so easily and learned so quickly and why it?s no longer considered an ability restricted to computer experts but relegated to any semi-power user of the Internet. Most individuals nowadays who are online on a fairly regular basis know enough HTML (or could learn it in less than an hour) to build a simple website by themselves.
Enough of my ranting though. I thought that Hayles? discussion of whether or not a programming language was a language in the sense that it could be compared to English, French, German, etc. was interesting given her approach, and I especially liked her clarifications about where they differed. On page 50, she discusses the important point of code as an executable language (2005). The byproduct of such a classification is that we must think about code in a different way than written or spoken traditional language. I seriously struggled learning Italian in high school and college and found learning C++ a whole lot easier. I think this is because we utilize a different part of our brain when we code versus when we write or speak.
We must, in essence, think like a machine when we code ? think mathematically, laying out how we need to program something so that the computer understands what we need to do, and without any ambiguity. If I were to mistipe a word like I do in this sentence, you still understand what I mean. If I mistype a single character in a line of code, the computer will not understand what I am meaning to tell it to do. This black and white line of thinking requires us to approach this language very differently than approaching everyday communication.
What intrigues me, however, is that we can program a computer in this black and white manner, but then the computer can evolve to understand the grey areas. Computer understanding, their intelligence so to speak, is what the Turing Test is all about. Both the Peters and Hayles? the Mood Swings readings discuss a Turing Test and so here?s a link for everyone to go look at: http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html It is for an award, the Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence for a Turing Test, lists the winners and available links back to 1991. If you?re new to Turing Tests, you should definitely take a look.
We were discussing in the other class the idea of whether computers can trust or not, and although I don?t want to reopen that discussion if no one wants to, I do wonder why so many people are so apprehensive towards even the idea of a computer not being capable of trust (or a variety of other so-called emotions). Peters brings up some very good points. ?The key question for twentieth-century communication theory ? a question at once philosophical, moral, and political ? is how wide and deep our empathy for otherness can reach, how ready we are to see ?the human as precisely what is different.? (230) Later, he writes ?It is human frailty, rather than rationality, that machines have difficulty mimicking.? (237) I see in society a growing move towards the natural, towards the spiritual and I wonder if part of that isn?t our desire to find that thing, that part of being human that sets us apart and above machines. If computers will one day be capable of doing everything a human can do, thinking as a human can, acting as a human can (as the Turing Test and cellular automata, which by the way if you want to play with a good example of see http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/Life32.html and Conway?s Game of Life), without the knowledge of inevitable death, where does that leave human beings in the order of things? It would imply that a machine could be a more perfect human, a meta-human so to speak, which then forces us to seek out and strengthen what sets us apart and what makes us better than a machine that we, ourselves build.
Posted at 05:08PM Nov 14, 2007 by caphelps in General | Comments[0]