This last week, I had some chance to work through a few computer-related problems. One was designing a form in Word, another had to do with a malfunctioning Survey Gismo instrument, and the third – with layout issues for the Syllabus journal.
To you understand the nature of the thinking machines one has to appreciate their enormous limitations and their profound advantages over us. The same works with dogs and children – you need to see clearly where are the limits of what they can possibly do, but also where can go much farther than you. Software is a creature, and the intelligence and errors of their creators is constantly visible. Of course many people that dogs and children are similarly created, but even if it is true, their creator would be so profoundly different from us that we can have no idea what he was thinking. Software is written by someone like us, which makes reading the intent possible.
Computers are ultimately predictable. There is always a solution. Dealing with machines, you will not be faced with the profound mystery of the naturally evolving universe, or with unpredictability of human behavior. Machines do not yet have their own will, interests, and rights. They don’t have moods, tempers and mid-life crises. But they are also profoundly autistic and cannot understand our language, our emotions, or read our simplest intentions. Communications have to be in the language they are able to comprehend. Like savants, computers have incredible memory and a gift for crunching numbers. They don’t get tired of endlessly repeating the same task a million times. And yet their intelligence is so limited that they cannot recognize the simplest patterns in the world we occupy.
The only way to be on good terms with computers is to enjoy tinkering. Many people tinker. All good teachers constantly tinker with their courses. Gardeners tinker with plants and soil. Tinkering is really experimenting with something of which you have no deep knowledge. Most of us will never become software engineers, or understand how computers actually work. But tinkerers acquire a different kind of knowledge, an intuitive sense of what’s working and what’s not; what is achievable and what is unlikely to achieve. It is understanding without really understanding. Tinkerers develop their own metal maps of whatever they tinker with, which have little resemblance of the “real” maps the creators used. I tinker with software, and you may tinker with old cars, but I recognize the kindred spirit.
To you understand the nature of the thinking machines one has to appreciate their enormous limitations and their profound advantages over us. The same works with dogs and children – you need to see clearly where are the limits of what they can possibly do, but also where can go much farther than you. Software is a creature, and the intelligence and errors of their creators is constantly visible. Of course many people that dogs and children are similarly created, but even if it is true, their creator would be so profoundly different from us that we can have no idea what he was thinking. Software is written by someone like us, which makes reading the intent possible.
Computers are ultimately predictable. There is always a solution. Dealing with machines, you will not be faced with the profound mystery of the naturally evolving universe, or with unpredictability of human behavior. Machines do not yet have their own will, interests, and rights. They don’t have moods, tempers and mid-life crises. But they are also profoundly autistic and cannot understand our language, our emotions, or read our simplest intentions. Communications have to be in the language they are able to comprehend. Like savants, computers have incredible memory and a gift for crunching numbers. They don’t get tired of endlessly repeating the same task a million times. And yet their intelligence is so limited that they cannot recognize the simplest patterns in the world we occupy.
The only way to be on good terms with computers is to enjoy tinkering. Many people tinker. All good teachers constantly tinker with their courses. Gardeners tinker with plants and soil. Tinkering is really experimenting with something of which you have no deep knowledge. Most of us will never become software engineers, or understand how computers actually work. But tinkerers acquire a different kind of knowledge, an intuitive sense of what’s working and what’s not; what is achievable and what is unlikely to achieve. It is understanding without really understanding. Tinkerers develop their own metal maps of whatever they tinker with, which have little resemblance of the “real” maps the creators used. I tinker with software, and you may tinker with old cars, but I recognize the kindred spirit.
Tinkerers of the world, unite!
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