What can humans do? What can machines do? How do humans delegate actions to machines? In this book, Harry Collins and Martin Kusch combine insights from sociology and philosophy to provide a novel answer to these increasingly important questions.The authors begin by distinguishing between two basic types of intentional behavior, which they call polimorphic actions and mimeomorphic actions. Polimorphic actions (such as writing a love letter) are ones that community members expect to vary with social context. Mimeomorphic actions (such a swinging a golf club) do not vary. Although machines cannot act, they can mimic mimeomorphic actions. Mimeomorphic actions are thus the crucial link between what humans can do and what machines can do. Following a presentation of their detailed categorization of actions, the authors apply their approach to a broad range of human-machine interactions and to learning. Key examples include bicycle riding and the many varieties of writing machines. They also show how their theory can be used to explain the operation of organizations such as restaurants and armies. Finally, they look at a historical case--the technological development of the air pump--applying their categorization of actions to the processes of mechanization and automation. Automation, they argue, can occur only where what we want to bring about can be brought about through mimeomorphic action.
Wijkman and Timberlake , Natural Disasters , 27 . 32. Wijkman and Timberlake , Natural Disasters , 49 . 33. Seager , New State of the Earth Atlas , 121 .
7. Sometimes the things that frighten you the most can be the biggest sources of strength. —Iris Timberlake or Most of us learn as we mature that strength.
28 It is therefore not difficult to reconcile Badiou«s references to historical ... On the one hand, Badiou«s major essays on Rancière all deal with the ...
Bayle offers a similar assessment in a letter to Minutoli: There has just been ... touchant la tran[s]substantiation, et leur conformité avec le calvinisme.
However, acceptance of the deal was driven in part by threats of worse to come should agreement ... see Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, s.
Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable.
Take a tour through the mind of America's undiscovered philosopher: Pierce Timberlake. Swimmer in a Dark Sea is a dizzying ride through a dazzling array of profound concepts.
"This collection of works is ambitious, well documented, thoroughly—though not turgidly—referenced, and comprehensively indexed.
The essays in this volume deal with a wide variety of subjects - the essential distinction between the "ecofeminist" and the "ecofeminine," the link between violence and environmental exploitation, feminism's relationship to animal rights ...
6 Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren, 228; Franklin Bowditch Dexter (ed.), The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, ...