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Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2
Featuring the author as the main character, Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 is an exploration of the potentials of both artificial intelligence and humans to adapt. The lines defining intelligence and consciousness are challenged and blurred, as are the lines defining the main character’s life. Essentially, two storylines unfold in this novel. The first is the development of a series of artificially intelligent computers, using bottom-up, connectionist techniques, for the purpose of passing the Master’s Comprehensive Exam, an exam given to those going for Master’s degrees in literature. Each implementation is more capable of adapting and learning than the previous, and culminates in the creation of Implementation H, or Helen. Whether…
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Thanksgiving.
It would appear that I will be going home for Thanksgiving. My mother called yesterday and said, “Do you really want to go to Cincinnatti and stay with your Aunt Peaches and all the people she wants to pass you around to?” I told her that, sure, I didn’t mind (although I hate moving from place to place in short jumps–I can’t do hotel-living, even if it’s someone’s house). She asked me if I were given a plane ticket, would I come home. Right then, I felt so bad that I hadn’t at least pretended to be homesick for a while. It’s not that I think she’s been spending her…
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Oh, the Agony
Last night, I joined some girls on my floor and a women’s fraternity on a outing to a place called Pumpkin Works. Pumpkin Works is a plaze with various mazes (and other things like hayrides, methinks). Their star attraction is a 6-acre maze, cut from a corn field, in differnet shapes each year. So you go at night, with some buddies and a flashnight, and try to make your way through the maze. Similarly, there’s a maze in which you weave your way through extremely claustrophobia-inducing walkways of hay with low ceilings, interspersed with short bits of crawling and the like. They have other stuff, too, but those are the…