Remember this riff? He’s back, with a riff on the concept of the Universal Library. Honestly, I’m not as enamored of this piece, but at the core, I think Dyson is arguing that Google is, in fact, actively laying down the foundation of the first AI. Exahaaaaaaaaale. (Of course, I argue as much in my book…)
The Library, indeed, contained everything, Borges explained, including “the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels’ autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue…”
Even in the Age of Search, we still need authors to find the meaningful books!
Oh, a wonderful riff.
I’m not so sure that Google will retain the mantle of “Turing’s cathedral” forever but if such exists it surely resides in Mountain View for now.
>>>we still need authors to find the meaningful books!
Well, for now. As a long-time fan and student of Ray Kurzweil I believe, like him, that sometime within the lifetimes of most people now alive, the raw computing power of the aveage personal computer will surpass that of the human brain. And given yet more time we will see machine intelligence fully unrivaled by human brains…
Not to say that the human brain won’t always retain some j’n’sai quoi qualities, but the plethora of bogus philosophies/theories now so common in books will just not stand up any longer under massive assualt by relentless logical engines. Except in cults. Cults will never go away, IMHO.
i love art and the Riff are very beatifull!