Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome | |||
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Software: Software is a set of instructions, data, or programs that are used to operate computers and carry out particular activities. It is the antithesis of hardware, which refers to a computer's external components. See also Computers, Computer programming, Hardware. _____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
Author | Concept | Summary/Quotes | Sources |
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Stephen Wolfram on Software - Dictionary of Arguments
Brockman I 278 Software/Wolfram: Today’s programming will be obsolete in a not very longtime. For example, people no longer learn assembly language, because computers are better at writing assembly language than humans are, and only a small set of people need to know the details of how language gets compiled into assembly language. A lot of what’s being done by armies of programmers today is similarly mundane. There’s no good reason for humans to be writing Java code or JavaScript code. We want to automate the programming process so that what’s important goes from what the human wants done to getting the machine, as automatically as possible, to do it. This will increase that equalization, which is something I’m interested in. A one-line piece of code already does something interesting and useful. It allows a vast range of people make computers do things for them. Brockman I 279 What will the world look like when most people can write code? One feature of code is that it’s immediately executable; it’s not like writing. When you write something, somebody has to read it, and the brain that’s reading it has to absorb the thoughts that came from the person who did the writing. Brockman I 280 What [would] the world would look like if most people could code. Clearly, many trivial things would change: Contracts would be written in code (…), Brockman I 281 simple things like that would change. But much more profound things would also change. Take high school education. The raw material for a typical high school student’s essay is something that’s already been written; students usually can’t generate new knowledge easily. But in the computational world, that will no longer be true. If the students know something about writing code, they’ll access all that digitized historical data and figure out something new. Then they’ll write an essay about something they’ve discovered. The achievement of knowledge-based programming is that it’s no longer sterile, because it’s got the knowledge of the world knitted into the language you’re using to write code. >Inventions/discoveries, >Creativity, >Knowledge, >Learning, >Programming, >Computers. Wolfram, Stephen (2015) „Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Civilization” (edited live interview), in: Brockman, John (ed.) 2019. Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Wolfram, Stephen Brockman I John Brockman Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI New York 2019 |