In Turning’s passage, I believe the contradictory statement; “The Argument for consciousness” by Professor Jefferson Lister Oration, to Turnings theory helps us understand online identity. This passage says that a machine cannot equal brains until it can compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions, or when it could feel pleasure, success or grief.
I believe this is applicable to online identity. When I compose an online character, on second life, as an example, I am emotionally invested in this “person.” I may be, but the actual character is not. When, she gets yelled at by other avatars, or in trouble for trying to steal a car, she is not upset or angry. The avatar does not know, what the information boxes mean when they pop-up on the screen. If my dog were to die in second life the avatar, would be “sad,” but they would still be hungry and go to work. If this were to happen in real life I would lose my appetite and probably be to upset to go to work. Emotion is one of the main differences between humans and online identities.
The second passage I chose was Lady Lovelace’s objection to Turning’s Theory. She spoke about computers ability to only know what we tell them to know. The passage further goes on to explain that in the future we will program computers to “think for themselves,” but they will still only know what we have programmed them to know.
I believe this passage summarizes online identity as well. My example for this one is smartchild or other bots that are accessible via the internet. Smart Child can tell you anything you want to know about movies, time’s table or other tangible information. But, if I ask it for advice about my boyfriend or what I should eat for dinner, it will ask me to rephrase and resubmit my question. This just strengthens Lady Lovelace’s idea that computers only know what we have programmed them to know.
Overall, Turning believes that eventually computers will be intelligent and will be able to mock a human completely. I think Turning would take second life and social games as a step into training computers to be human. The games are programmed to simulate a world that has been create within the computer, however real world entities are slowly making their way into second lives. Using Turing’s ideals computer and humans becoming one in the same would is getting close through these media’s.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Class Discussion
Turning’s composition of idea’s in this writing composed many idea’s about the ideals of computers. At the time when this article was written technology did not have such a large impact on daily lives as it does now. However, the thoughts, theories and games that he has proposed can be applied today too many of the questions and even ethical dilemmas that we are faced with as a society moving forward with technology.
The first idea introduced is simply “Can machines think?” We know that machine cannot think. Machines have, in a sense, a hard drive that is a brain. This can be applied to articles we read at the start of the semester. But behind every computer is someone’s bias and thoughts.
The imitation game was a game played centuries ago, while this is not something that I am familiar with, the games purpose is to decided who is male, and who is female through a series of questions. Turing is applying it to computers; the third parties purpose is to decide who is a person and what “person” is a computer.
I believe that the computer can simple “imitate a person” based on the components it was proposed to do. But, if you were to ask it a question about emotion or childhood memories, would the computer be able to answer this question? I do not think so. If it could, the computer would not speak of childhood memories it had while it was being assembled, it would tell childhood stories of the programmer.
Many movies have displayed a variety of outcomes of what could happen if computers did have brains. Take I Robot for example, this highly “intelligent” robots were made, but somewhere along the way a glitch occurred and the robots turned on their creators. I personally do not want earth to be taken down by computers. I think eventually society will have computers doing all manual jobs even more so than now. But, still there is a human behind its creation.
We know that computers cannot think and do not have minds, but I believe this is the beauty as a computer. When I use a computer, I do not want to tell it my problems and it tell me what to do. I want it to regurgitate information about temperate, how to spell words and world news back to me. I do believe computers have its own digital mind within its mechanics and if I wanted to think very abstractly I could say the hard drive is its brain and the screen is its mouth/face. But, as far as human standards go, computers do not have brains.
The first idea introduced is simply “Can machines think?” We know that machine cannot think. Machines have, in a sense, a hard drive that is a brain. This can be applied to articles we read at the start of the semester. But behind every computer is someone’s bias and thoughts.
The imitation game was a game played centuries ago, while this is not something that I am familiar with, the games purpose is to decided who is male, and who is female through a series of questions. Turing is applying it to computers; the third parties purpose is to decide who is a person and what “person” is a computer.
I believe that the computer can simple “imitate a person” based on the components it was proposed to do. But, if you were to ask it a question about emotion or childhood memories, would the computer be able to answer this question? I do not think so. If it could, the computer would not speak of childhood memories it had while it was being assembled, it would tell childhood stories of the programmer.
Many movies have displayed a variety of outcomes of what could happen if computers did have brains. Take I Robot for example, this highly “intelligent” robots were made, but somewhere along the way a glitch occurred and the robots turned on their creators. I personally do not want earth to be taken down by computers. I think eventually society will have computers doing all manual jobs even more so than now. But, still there is a human behind its creation.
We know that computers cannot think and do not have minds, but I believe this is the beauty as a computer. When I use a computer, I do not want to tell it my problems and it tell me what to do. I want it to regurgitate information about temperate, how to spell words and world news back to me. I do believe computers have its own digital mind within its mechanics and if I wanted to think very abstractly I could say the hard drive is its brain and the screen is its mouth/face. But, as far as human standards go, computers do not have brains.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Jazzy Potts.. Have you heard of her?
Jazzy Potts was the fake persona I chose for the Fakespace project. I loved this project, it was one of my favorites that I have ever been assigned. It allowed my not only to explore different mediums on the Web, but let me make up a fake person.
I chose Jazzy, at first as a joke, and the she slowly became a half made up person have version of myself, with the visual identity of my friend. I chose her to attend UNC because; I lived in Raleigh, NC and was determined to go to school there, until we moved. I want to get my MBA and that is why Jazzy is getting her MBA. She is a marketing/ Political Science ungraduate major because I am Public Relations and if someone talked about marketing to “Jazzy,” I would be able to hold up a conversation. Living in Baton Rogue, LA was a complete random hometown, but I am facebook friends with a lot of people from there now.
When I was first assigned this project, I thought getting people to facebook me and talk would be very easy, however I was wrong. People from UNC sent me messages upon messages asking “Who are you?” and “Do I know you?” This is proving that people really are getting smarter about “the book” and for all they know I could be a potential employer or administration from the school. However, even with their skepticism, they still added me.
On Facebook and Myspace I had trouble getting people to talk to me. However, a lot of my friends from WVU added me because they were curious about the project. So much "buzz" was generated about this "Jazzy Potts" chararcter that I actually heard people about her and asking if they knew her. This further proves how much these social networking systems run our lives
My final observation was that it was much easier to search and add friends on Twitter than FB or Myspace. I don't think all the kinds have been worked out in Twitter yet, however I really like it and believe it is the wave of the future.
http://jazzjams.blogspot.com/
This is the link to Jazzy's blog that connects to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Google Maps and Flickr
I chose Jazzy, at first as a joke, and the she slowly became a half made up person have version of myself, with the visual identity of my friend. I chose her to attend UNC because; I lived in Raleigh, NC and was determined to go to school there, until we moved. I want to get my MBA and that is why Jazzy is getting her MBA. She is a marketing/ Political Science ungraduate major because I am Public Relations and if someone talked about marketing to “Jazzy,” I would be able to hold up a conversation. Living in Baton Rogue, LA was a complete random hometown, but I am facebook friends with a lot of people from there now.
When I was first assigned this project, I thought getting people to facebook me and talk would be very easy, however I was wrong. People from UNC sent me messages upon messages asking “Who are you?” and “Do I know you?” This is proving that people really are getting smarter about “the book” and for all they know I could be a potential employer or administration from the school. However, even with their skepticism, they still added me.
On Facebook and Myspace I had trouble getting people to talk to me. However, a lot of my friends from WVU added me because they were curious about the project. So much "buzz" was generated about this "Jazzy Potts" chararcter that I actually heard people about her and asking if they knew her. This further proves how much these social networking systems run our lives
My final observation was that it was much easier to search and add friends on Twitter than FB or Myspace. I don't think all the kinds have been worked out in Twitter yet, however I really like it and believe it is the wave of the future.
http://jazzjams.blogspot.com/
This is the link to Jazzy's blog that connects to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Google Maps and Flickr
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