Snappy one-liners
At least I think they're snappy. I was asked by a magazine doing a piece about Wake for a one-liner they could use as a teaser. I gave them five, and told them to take their pick:
Ray Kurzweil says the singularity is near. Actually, it's all around us.
The World Wide Web will soon have as many interconnections as a human brain. What happens then?
Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity. Our minds were the first example, but they won't be the last.
Artificial intelligence doesn't necessarily require a programmer.
Human intelligence didn't require an intelligent designer -- so why should we suppose artificial intelligence will?
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Labels: Wake
Posted by Rob on Monday, April 06, 2009
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5 comments
5 Comments:
Lovely. I particularly like the opening one on Kurzweil.
Hi Rob,
I agree that they're all snappy, and should catch the attention of most readers, but the last one irked me a bit.
"Human intelligence didn't require an intelligent designer -- so why should we suppose artificial intelligence will?"
Do we really know that the emergence of human intelligence didn't involve some sort of external intelligent designer?
I have trouble buying into the idea that consciousness is simply the byproduct of the neural connections in our brains (or to paraphrase Deepak Chopra "the epiphenomena of matter").
I think this is the main reason I've been less enthusiastic about your WWW trilogy than I have been for some of your other works. In this case, the premise stretches my suspension of disbelief a bit too much.
That's not to say I won't be reading it. I've already started reading the serialized version in Analog (and am enjoying it so far), and will almost certainly pick up a copy of the hardcover book.
And who knows... maybe Wake, Watch, and Wonder (or is that WWW:Wake, WWW: Watch, and WWW:Wonder) will help stretch my mind a bit. That's certainly been the case for some of your other books, and I think that's a big part of your success. You challenge your readers and expose us to new ideas and stretch our minds. And as Oliver Wendel Holmes put it:
"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. "
Take Care,
Lou Prosperi
Lou, the purpose of the snappy one-liner is to get people to read the article, pure and simple. It's supposed to be provocative.
However, I never said, "Consciousness is simply the byproduct of the neural connections in our brains."
Hi Rob,
You're right. You never said that, and I should have been more clear in my post. I probably read more into your "snappy one-liner" than I should have.
My apologies.
Thanks!
Lou
No problem Lou! :D
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