ARTIFICIAL MINDS by Stan Franklin MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-06178-3, $35
Will your computer ever have a mind? After reading
Artificial Minds
by Stan Franklin, I believe the answer is clearly: You're asking the wrong question. At the very beginning of Franklin's genial "tour," he sets out seven propositions he intends to illustrate. Because these include "mind is better viewed as a continuum rather than a Boolean notion" and "mind, to some degree, is implementable on machines," the outcome of the story is never in doubt. However, as a good storyteller, Franklin makes the journey both entertaining and educational.
He's prepared a hearty smorgasbord, with dishes drawn from many fields. I went light on the neurons and ganglia, merely sampled the semantics, but I
took large helpings of mathematics, physics, and robotics. You'll also encounter AI, Turing machines, Schrödinger's cat, Gödel's theorem, genetic algorithms, artificial life, chaos theory, and legions of robots. Although it's written for the nonexpert, there's plenty to interest professional researchers.
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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Yes, Your PC Has A Mind
