Rewrite in Progress: 2019-08-05 See also: SentimentalStargazer.com
Thinking Talking Computing
Computing reveals something about how we think and talk.
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Like fish in the ocean,
we swim in a vast sea of information.
Like fish discovering water,
only now are we becoming aware of this sea.
That awareness is called consciousness.
It will carry us deep into the waters of thought itself.
Soon we will meet intelligence beyond our own.
But it will come, not from the stars,
It will come from us.
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Our Computers are made of wires and chips. Now very reliable, today they perform billions of operations per second, but are capable of only very simplified arithmetic. Every thing we do on computers today - math, text, images, music, networks - is built on repeated arithmetic.
Our Brains are made of cells, mostly neurons. They are unreliable and slow - firing and recovering takes many milliseconds BUT there are 80 billion neurons in your head, with trilllions of connections - more connections in your head than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Our brains don't use arithmetic. They are built on pattern matching instead.
Our brains are amazing supercomputers.
How do brains work? We don't know, yet.
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1 - Research - Thinking, Talking, Computing
Long ago, I worked on the first supercomputer.
At first I thought computers were only for numbers,
Then I was given the task of writing a parser.
What’s a parser? I asked.
Parsers recognize words, I was told.
And from there, the story leads into . . .
the deep space between thought and language.
There I keep encountering the question:
How can a two year old talk?
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2 - Models - Modelling, measuring, controlling the real world by simulation - work in progress
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3 - Development - Systems Software
I create systems software
invisible programs hidden inside your computer
like operating systems, networks, databases, languages . . .
Systems software
makes concrete things like chips and wires, zeros and ones,
into abstract things that you use :
like email, spreadsheets and web browsers, . . .
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4 - Projects - EXAMPLES - two from various real projects I have done:
Factories: Warehouses:
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4 - ABOUT ME - my history, tech info, resumé cv
Antelope Flats at sunrise:
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CONTACT: Gareth Harris, email: garethharris@mac.com.