Emergent AI’s message about complexity and emergence seems to be something that many people want to hear. The nondeterminism of emergent systems has a special resonance in our time of widespread disaffection with instrumental reason.
Predictor: Turkle, Sherry
Prediction, in context:In her 1995 book “Life on the Screen,” Sherry Turkle – an accomplished social psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from MIT whose studies centered around people and computers for decades – writes: ”The diffusion of popular versions of connectionist ideas about mind has been greatly facilitated by the fact that small neural net programs are easily run on widely available desktop computers. The two-volume ‘Parallel Distributed Processing,’ what might be thought of as the Bible of connectionism’s rebirth, was published in 1986. It inspired a flurry of programming activity, and not just among AI researchers and professional programmers. The PDP programs were simple enough for high school hackers and home computer aficionados to experiment with … It was like being told you could be a cordon bleu chef using only a small Teflon frying pan and spatula … PDP was presented in a way that spoke directly to the learning style of the tinkerer … Emergent AI’s [Artificial Intelligence’s] message about complexity and emergence seems to be something that many people want to hear. The nondeterminism of emergent systems has a special resonance in our time of widespread disaffection with instrumental reason.”
Biography:Sherry Turkle was the author of “Life on the Screen: Computers and the Human Spirit.” and a professor of the psychology of science at MIT. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 5: The Quality of Emergence
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 142, 143
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney