*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__signs_of_the_singularity.pdf Signs of the Singularity] by Vernor Vinge.
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__signs_of_the_singularity.pdf Signs of the Singularity] by Vernor Vinge.
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__can_machines_be_conscious.pdf Can Machines Be Conscious?], Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__can_machines_be_conscious.pdf Can Machines Be Conscious?], Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
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** Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity. Bio taken from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil Wikipedia]:
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<blockquote>
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Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ kurz-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, as has been displayed in his vast collection of public talks, wherein he has shared his primarily optimistic outlooks on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
code: Translating from one system of values to another system.
Electricity
The Binary System: a system where the only two numbers available are 0 and 1. Every operation that we can do in decimal, with 10 digits, we can also do in binary.
The Transistor: A switch controlled by electricity.
Counting in binary
Thursday
Announcement: If you want to take CSC102 and haven't contacted Pippin Wolfe (apwolfe@smith.edu), please do so now!
We continue counting in binary, then move on to simple additions in binary, remembering first how we do additions by hand in decimal.
Figuring out the value of a binary number: what is the value of 1110, for example?
==> Main message: everything we can do in decimal we can do in binary
Recap:
at some point in time, engineers had very fast electronic switches at their disposition in the form of transistors
mathematicians had shown that a binary system allowed the same quality of arithmetic as the decimal system.
Comes Boole (1815-1864), and the boolean algebra (very soon we'll talk about Shannon, who linked Boole's work with binary arithmetic. More on that later)
Boolean assertions can be either True or False
new boolean assertions can be combined with simple operators to form other assertions that are also boolean and can only be True or False
The operators are AND, OR, and NOT. They are defined by truth tables.
Several examples to discuss in class:
Alarm system to go to CSC103 the right day at the right time
Alarm system to allow one to stay in bed during the weekend
True/False machine to pick ice cream
Reading
Primary:
Video (Part 2) on George Boole and Boolean Algebra. (5.18 min)
You will find Wikipedia's description of the processor interesting. Concentrate mostly on the sections labeled Microprocessor, Operation, and Clock Rate.
Homework 3 is available. Due 10/3/13 10/8/13 @ 9:00 a.m.
Week 5 10/1
Tuesday
Going over the last problem of Lab 2
The Von Neumann bottleneck.
Moore's Law, first introduced in 1965. The number of transistors in circuits doubles every 18 months. What it is, what it means, how it has been extended.
What is Processing? Ben Fry, one of the co-inventors of the language, explains.
This is less about Processing than about data visualization, and how Ben Fry, one of the co-authors of Processing uses the language to represent data. Several of his projects are presented.
Ben Fry generated the computer graphics for Minority Report (start watching around Time Stamp 7 minutes 25 seconds).
Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity. Bio taken from Wikipedia:
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ kurz-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, as has been displayed in his vast collection of public talks, wherein he has shared his primarily optimistic outlooks on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
Food for thought...
Additional articles on the issue of the Singularity (including IEEE Spectrum issue on the subject).
