This is part of a pattern that I'll call "romanticizing the past." People have things that they hate, paint a picture of a time before that hated thing existed, and claim that the world was so much better then.
Sometimes it's true. But more often than not it is not. But that's not what I want to post about. I'll rant on that subject another time. Right now I want to talk about how cool Google is.
In response to discussion in the class I was inspired to write a blog post, here, about the way that the past is romanticized. I wanted to refer to a book that I'd read but I could not remember its name. What I did remember was:
- He'd described the fact that even though computers regularly beat grand masters at chess these days, that humans and chess-playing computers, working in collaboration, beat both the best humans and the best computers, when working alone. These computer-human teams he called "centaurs"
- He'd described the fact that in the past people were readers, not writers. Once they finished school they did relatively little writing because most jobs were manual labor--in farm and factory. Today people write more than ever before--and even if much of it is short, and trivial, it's still writing. He cited the enormous number of words per day written on Facebook.
So I Googled for "book with centaur playing chess internet facebook"
The first result, was the one I wanted:
Excerpt | Smarter Than You Think
smarterthanyouthink.net/excerpt/The Rise of the Centaurs. Who's better at chess—computers or humans? ... Together, they would form what chess players later called a centaur: a hybrid beast ... BUY THEBOOK ... Twitter · Facebook · Collision Detection (Clive's blog)... Missing:internet
Yay Google.
And yes, I cheated and backdated this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment