Neil Gershenfelds WhenThings Start to Think
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Neil Gershenfeld's When Things Start To Think
When Things Start To Think was written by an extraordinarily brilliant man named, Neil Gershenfeld. Gershenfeld is presently the head of the Physics and Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory where he leads the Things That Think program, but he was previously a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and a well-respected staff member at Bell Labs. It is his professional background, as well as his deep love for technology, that has enabled him to write such an intelligent and insightful book about the future of computers and the effect that they will have on our society.
The author is understandably excited about computers and technology in general and has written When Things Start To Think to inform and somewhat prepare the average American citizen for the possibilities that face us in this immensely fast-paced industry. From Gershenfeld's point-of-view today's technology is nothing but an assortment of sufficing models that are just capable enough to provide us with instant information gratification but not intelligent enough to help us manage the information. It is the Digital Revolution that is proposed by the author in this book that has the capability to change all of that once and for all.
In many ways, the pen and paper still perform their jobs better than their digital descendants. This does not mean that all computers should be thrown out. We should just expect more out of them. Gershenfeld compares these two mediums with the horse and the car...