Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 312.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 06:19:32 +0100
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Re: 14.0289 neural circuitry?
Willard,
The source text as you quote it reads "[...] neural circuitry [...]".
As you comment upon it the adjective changes to "electrical".
Now wouldn't a computer have to be programmed to recognize the intended
synonymity? Wouldn't a human have to run scenarios to know when to raise
the delicate nuance that exists between "neural" and "electrical"?
> becoming more and more difficult to get computing into perspective because
> of such metaphors? It's not as if we can do much about this -- except in
> the classroom, where I'd think it's rather important to point out that the
> way computers process data is very different from however it is that we
> think about artefacts, and that this difference is our real subject.
Is a scenario very different from a program?
Would the real subject be tolerance for loops and ability to thread a
meta-level at will?
Strange how my reading of your moves in the hypertext linking post
predisposed me to read your metaphor post along the lines of a trope of
slippage. I am beginning to think twist instead....
a computer may slip on a loop; a human, groove to the beat
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
Member of the Evelyn Letters Project
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dchamber/evelyn/evtoc.htm
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