A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Washington is a city of locker-room boys, and all the old, outmoded notions apply: men and women are ushered to separate rooms aft...er dinner, sex is dirty, and they are still serving onion-soup dip.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man's. It is in the boys' gyms, the college fra...ternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And one has eaten and one walks, past the magazines with nudes... and the posters for bullfight and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which they'll soon tear down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate hero...es to us all. And some are jerks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your brain receives, stores, and processes information, dispenses results, and controls your biological equipment. When properly p...rogrammed, computers can do likewise, except that they control electromechanical rather than biological equipment. Beyond these functional similarities, computers and brains have virtually nothing in common. To begin with, the electronic circuits in a computer are not analogous to brain cells. The two differ in appearance, in structure, and in principles of operation. The key functions of information storage and information processing are served in computers by physically different components. In a typical computer, one finds separate CPU and memory units; but even in computer designs where processing circuits are intermixed, the two functions remain distinct. In the brain they are not distinct; they're distributed throughout the brain and intermixed in ways that we don't understand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the eighth, Hermanski smashed a drive to the scoreboard. Henrich backed against the board and leaped either four or fourteen fe...et into the air. He stayed aloft so long he looked like an empty uniform hanging in its locker. When he came down he had the ball.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Eastern steamboat passed us with music and a cheer, as if they were going to a ball, when they might be going to--Davy's locke...r.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »