[SIGCIS-Members] (no subject)

[Jonathan Coopersmith]

At this weekend's NYC antiquarian book show:

Thinking Machines
Image
[image: A book with a yellow, slightly tattered dust jacket, with the title
“Giant Brains or Machines That Think,” by Edmund C. Berkeley, and a black
circle containing an image of a human face with a yellow wire connecting
the forehead to a box.]
A first edition of the 1949 book “Giant Brains: Or, Machines That Think” is
on offer as part of a collection of books, documents and artifacts called
“A.I.: The Hidden History.”Credit...via Christian White Rare Books
[image: A book with a yellow, slightly tattered dust jacket, with the title
“Giant Brains or Machines That Think,” by Edmund C. Berkeley, and a black
circle containing an image of a human face with a yellow wire connecting
the forehead to a box.]

Today, the specter of artificial intelligence may rouse anxiety in the
minds of the bookish sorts who pack the fair. But in his 1949 book “Giant
Brains: Or, Machines That Think,” the American computer scientist Edmund
Callis Berkeley struck a more upbeat note. “It seems to me,” he wrote,
“that they will take a load off men’s minds as great as the load that
printing took off men’s writing: a great burden lifted.” A first edition of
Berkeley’s book is among the dozens of items included in “A.I.: The Hidden
History,” a collection of books, documents and artifacts offered by
Christian White Rare Books ($125,000). The collection includes material
from leading figures like the mathematician Claude Shannon (known as the
father of information theory) and the philosopher David Lewis, as well as
from (ahem) women who were active in the field.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/arts/new-york-antiquarian-book-fair.html

Stay sane,

Jonathan

Jonathan Coopersmith
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Professor (retired)
Department of History
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-4236
979.739.4708 (cell)

"A Chief Skunk Looks Back,"
<https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/a-chief-skunk-looks-back/>
(interview
with Sherm Mullin) *Aerospace America* March 2023

It's taking longer to vote - especially if you are Black or Hispanic
<https://theconversation.com/its-taking-more-time-to-cast-a-ballot-in-us-elections-and-even-longer-for-black-and-hispanic-voters-191711>
, theconversation.com

Preserving space archives:  https://www.toboldlypreserve.space/

*FAXED.  The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine* (Johns Hopkins University
Press)
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