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 »
Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals ..., had ... attained a kind of immortality. You ...couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder; assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And I am going from my valley. But thi...s time I shall never return. I am leaving behind me my 50 years of memory--memory. Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago of men and women long since dead. Yet who shall say what is real and what is not. Can I believe this all gone when their voices are still a glory in my ears. No. And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain within my mind. There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can go close my eyes on my valley as it is today and it is gone. And I see it as it was when I was a boy--green it was and possessed of the plenty of the earth. In all Wales there was none so beautiful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the marriage ceremony, that moment when falling in love is replaced by the arduous drama of staying in love, the words "for ric...her, for poorer, in sickness and in health,' til death us do part" set love in the temporal context in which it achieves its meaning. As time begins to elapse, one begins to love the other because they have shared the same experience, the same moments of duration. Selves may not intertwine but lives do, and shared memory becomes as much of a bond as the bond of the flesh. One might say shared memory is not love itself but a consequence of being in love; but in what people commonly say about long-lasting love, it is the attitudes toward time implied in such words such as constancy and fidelity that recur.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child s...ays that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »