Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category

Robert J. Sawyer’s talk at Google’s Waterloo office

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Robert J. Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction author, gave a fascinating talk at Google’s Waterloo office. He discusses how the world wide web might gain consciousness, the subject of his latest trilogy. The talk touches on several topics related to theories of consciousness, and is worth watching.

I would also recommend picking up his latest novel, Wake, the first book in the WWW (Wake, Watch, Wonder) trilogy. I’ve read the book and the trilogy is off to a great start. I will definitely be picking up the other books when they come out.

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Book: I Am a Strange Loop

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

I Am a Strange Loop
I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter

This latest book from cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, while not quite as much fun as his mind-bending classic, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in some ways goes further and is more focused in explaining how consciousness might arise as an emergent property from the chemistry and biology of the brain. The author’s tone here is much more contemplative, philosophical and personal, while the previous work explored many diverse topics including mathematics, art, music, language, illusions, computational theory, and of course intelligence and consciousness. I would recommend reading the earlier work first, which has become a true classic, but this latest book is probably much more accessible to a general audience.

Rating: 8/10

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