You may be interested in the undernoted. neil Dr Roger Neil Barton Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research http://www.uclmail.net/~neil.barton/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joanne Roberts" <joanne.roberts@NEWCASTLE.AC.UK> To: <CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 12:41 PM Subject: [CSL] FW: <nettime> computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum died, age 85 -----Original Message----- From: nettime-l-bounces@kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-bounces@kein.org] On Behalf Of Geert Lovink Sent: 07 March 2008 12:10 To: nettime-l@kein.org Subject: <nettime> computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum died, age 85 (In the fall of 2007 an old friend of mine, the Amsterdam-based journalist-artist Ine Poppe decided to hop on the train and go to Berlin to visit Joseph Weizenbaum. She did an interview with him and came back with lots of interesting stories. It was around the same time that I read the interview book , made by Gunna Wendt, in German. I wrote about it in a nettime posting called the Society of the Query. Ine gave me a document, in German called Was ich am Ende meines Lebens glaube, 1 DIN A4 with 14 theses on it. It's hanging above my desk, in front of me. "5) Not all aspect of life are computable." The same can be said about Weizenbaum's life. /geert) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum Joseph Weizenbaum (Berlin, January 8, 1923 - March 5, 2008) was an American professor emeritus of computer science at MIT. Born in Berlin, Germany to Jewish parents, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1936, emigrating with his family to the United States. He started studying mathematics in 1941 in the US, but his studies were interrupted by the war, during which he served in the military. Around 1950 he worked on analog computers, and helped create a digital computer for Wayne State University. In 1955 he worked for General Electric on the first computer used for banking, and in 1963 took a position at MIT. In 1966, he published a comparatively simple program called ELIZA which demonstrated natural language processing by engaging humans into a conversation resembling that with an empathic psychologist. The program applied pattern matching rules to the human's statements to figure out its replies. (Programs like this are now called chatterbots.) Weizenbaum was shocked that his program was taken seriously by many users, who would open their hearts to it. He started to think philosophically about the implications of Artificial Intelligence and later became one of its leading critics. His influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. This he saw as a consequence of their not having been raised in the emotional environment of a human family. Weizenbaum was the creator of the SLIP programming language. A few years ago, Weizenbaum moved to Berlin and lived in the vicinity of where he used to live with his parents.[1][2] Until his death he was Chairman of the Scientific Council at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin. See also: http://www.duvet-dayz.com/archives/2008/03/07/587/ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ************************************************************************************ Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html *************************************************************************************