Thursday, April 14, 2005

Communication networks

Hi.

Sorry that I am not able to update my thoughts regularly at the moment. I don't have that good internet connection, and I am also thinking intensively on computer memories for the last weeks (very interesting, they really only store facts in form of let`s say "0" and "1") .

In the meanwhile I also got more curious on how our human minds deal with memory. Memory is some process that is very strongly connected to "consciousness".

I have been reading in Dennett's book on Darwin's Dangerous idea, that Biology can be seen as Engineering ! That`s a great idea ! He argues how much we neglect the idea's and concepts that engineers have discovered.

In Minsky's idea's one point of attention is the problem of "building something": As kids we learn building toy houses, train tracks, marvellous stories, ships, rockets, castles, simple relationships, networks. What "agencies" are necessary to handle these now simple tasks ? How did we represent our new discoveries inside our children minds ? What does language do with these representations and at this point as well, what does remembering do ?

Two concepts could help out of these kinds of questions: One is the concept of frame, a kind of standard application form where we just need to fill in the empty boxed with all kinds of properties and links, the other concept is the k-line, which links different agencies together, as in some Greek tragedy the red line that is used not to get lost in the labyrinth (need to update this and fill in the correct name, think it's Minotaure)

I am wondering if we would understand common sense thinking better one day, what impact could that have on society... ? Well, this is a nice question to close this small post :-)

1 comment:

TK said...

Congrats on joining us taxpayers - I just paid my taxes here last week. Always fun.

I too considered life inherently meaningless. Interesting point about the purpose of life being to study life. It makes a lot of sense; I spend a great deal of time reading, writing, listening to music, and watcing movies - most of which pertain to trying to make some sort of sense of human existence.

Anyway, I'm back in the U.S. and move into my apt. next week. Then I need to start trying to make sense of my own existence.