In Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum asserts the existence of two distinct modes of human thought: intuition and logic. Intuitive thought is generative in ways that logical thought can never be because intuition holds itself to less rigorous standards of evidence. Yet, logical thought keeps intuition grounded by turning impressions and hunches into testable hypotheses. For Weizenbaum, intuition belies the aggrandized claims made on behalf of logical computation by his peers in the field of artificial intelligence. Intuition, in essence, eludes the mathematical formalism necessary for calculation because it is the very thing lost in the rationalization of individual impressions. It takes human reason and judgment to recognize that computer power and calculation do not make up for intuition’s loss. Computers will never be capable of such insight no matter how far artificial...
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1 December 2020
Book Review|
December 01 2020
Enumerations: Data and Literary Study
Passwords: Philology, Security, Authentication
The Digital Banal: New Media and American Literature and Culture
Enumerations: Data and Literary Study
. By Piper, Andrew. Chicago
: Univ. of Chicago Press
. 2018
. xiii, 243. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $27.50; e-book available.Passwords: Philology, Security, Authentication
. By Lennon, Brian. Cambridge, MA
: Harvard Univ. Press
. 2018
. xviii, 207. Cloth, $41.00.The Digital Banal: New Media and American Literature and Culture
. By Dinnen, Zara. New York
: Columbia Univ. Press
. 2018
. viii, 223. Cloth, $65.00; e-book, $64.99.
Aarthi Vadde
Aarthi Vadde
Aarthi Vadde is associate professor of English and affiliated faculty in the computational media, arts, and cultures program at Duke University. She is the author of Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism beyond Europe, 1914–2016 (2016), coeditor of The Critic as Amateur (2019), and coeditor of a Post45 Contemporaries essay cluster entitled “Web 2.0 and Literary Criticism” (2019).
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American Literature (2020) 92 (4): 820–824.
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Aarthi Vadde; Enumerations: Data and Literary Study
Passwords: Philology, Security, Authentication
The Digital Banal: New Media and American Literature and Culture. American Literature 1 December 2020; 92 (4): 820–824. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-8781079
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