One difference between humans and computers lies in the relative strengths in their respective abilities to understand symbolic re...lationships and to learn facts. A computer can remember billions of facts with extreme precision, whereas we are hard pressed to remember more than a handful of phone numbers. On the other hand, we can read a novel and understand and manipulate the subtle relationships between the characters--something that computers have yet to demonstrate an ability to do. We often use our ability to understand and recall relationships as an aid in remembering simple things, as when we remember names by means of our past associations with each name and when we remember phone numbers in terms of geometric or numeric patterns they make. We thus use a very complex process to accomplish a very simple task, but it is the only process we have for the job. Computers have been weak in their ability to understand and process information that contains abstractions and complex webs of relationships, but they are improving.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Speedometers, for example, may be digital and give a numeric readout, or analog and produce a lengthening rectangle (or rotating p...ointer). The analog output is less precise, but puts one's speed in some perspective. An 82 and a 28 are almost indistinguishable, but a long rectangle is quite distinct from a short one, and if its length is changing, that too is manifest. The same trade-off is present with clocks and watches, digital timepieces producing precision, but lacking in all the associations a clockface can engender.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The token woman carries a bouquet of hothouse celery and a stenographer's pad; she will take... the minutes, perk the coffee, smile like a plastic daisy and put out the black cat of her sensuous anger to howl on the fence all night.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,... All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Father told me if I could get my fingers to ballet the typewriter keys... to Nureyev the steno pad everything would be perfect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every ...shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, o...ne might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »