Friday readings: Thinking and forgetting
As part of my new work habits, I try to spend Friday afternoon reading stuff I've come across during the week. Here are some of the things I read today.
Jeffrey Rosen has a great article about forgetting on the web in the NYT Magazine. As our formerly differentiated identities merge online, we need to think about new forms of digital forgetfulness and forgiveness.
On Edge, David Gelernter writes an interesting (if somewhat lengthy) text on the next level of artifical intelligence. He argues that a computer (or, rather, a network of computers) will never be conscious, but that it might, at some point, pretend to be. In other words: Computers will never possess human-like intelligence (because they are physically not human-like), but they might mimic human-like intelligence.
Paul Graham argues that you can't control when you have good ideas, but that you should control which ideas are on top of your mind. His lesson: "Be careful what you let become critical to you." (Maybe somehow linked to my learning that you should think hard about what you want to think about.)
