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 »
Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrence...s that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The discussion of the whole problem of technology ... has been strangely led astray through an all-too-exclusive concentration upo...n the service or disservice the machines render to men. The assumption here is that every tool and implement is primarily designed to make human life easier and human labor less painful.... But ... homo faber, the toolmaker, invented tools and equipment in order to erect a world, not ... to help the human life process. The question therefore is not so much whether we are the masters or the slaves of our machines, but whether machines still serve the world and its things, or if, on the contrary, they and the automatic motion of their processes have begun to rule and even destroy world and things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined wi...thout resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the processes That first mentioned your name at some crowded cocktail... Party long ago, and someone (not the person addressed) Overheard it and carried that name around in his wallet For years as the wallet crumbled and bills slid in And out of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a wo...man standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation. Pleasure an...d pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature's workings. Otherwise there would be no impulse to satisfy the needs which ensure the body's and the species' survival. And survival--for reasons we do not know--is inwritten, inscribed as nature's only goal. Gratification, or its anticipation, acts as a goad. Pain or the fear of pain acts as a warning. Both are essential. The difference between them, considered as opposites, is that pleasure has a constant tendency to exceed its functional purpose, to not know its place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A broad consensus exists that Lincoln was more eloquent than Davis in expressing war aims, more successful in communicating with t...he people, more skillful as a political leader in keeping factions working together for the war effort, better able to endure criticism and work with his critics to achieve a common goal. Lincoln was flexible, pragmatic, with a sense of humor to smooth relationships and help him survive the stress of his job; Davis was austere, rigid, humorless, with the type of personality that readily made enemies. Lincoln had a strong physical constitution; Davis suffered ill health and was frequently prostrated with illness. Lincoln picked good administrative subordinates (with some exceptions) and knew how to delegate authority to them; Davis went through five secretaries of war in four years; he spent a great deal of time and energy on petty administrative details that he should have left to subordinates. A disputatious man, Davis sometimes seemed to prefer winning an argument to winning the war; Lincoln was happy to lose an argument if it would help him win the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »