Customer Reviews (3)

Ideas and Information.
Inspiration as opposed to instruction. Mind as opposed to machine...
Read any physics text or popularization of the past thirty-five years and you are virtually certain to encounter Arno Penzias. He received the Nobel Prize for physics by detecting the cosmic microwave background radiation that George Gamow had predicted two decades earlier. Theorists sometimes suggest that Gamow's Nobel somehow landed accidentally in Penzias' empirical lap. One imagines that Penzias might be tempted to barrow a line from Rodney Dangerfield: "I tell ya, I don't get no respect." He doesn't do that.
Anyway, when I spotted this book in a used bookstore I happily nabbed it. The author's theme in this volume is computability -- how it works, what it is, and what it isn't. The book is highly readable and makes for a sound introduction to what computer software is, and to how artificial intelligence and human intelligence are, foundationally, two very different things. The strong AI types don't want to hear this stuff and will likely complain that Penzias' book is "dated." I will say that only the author's examples/ allegories are dated. Technological gadgetry changes quite a bit in 14 years, but the examples are only examples. Programming is still programming; it is still a process of numerical reduction. It is still something far different than human intuition. With a modicum of updates, Penzias' thesis might easily read as a more current set of arguments and observations.
Consider this book a springboard into the work of Roger Penrose (uh-oh, you'll be mixing empirical guy and theoretical guy!).
Penzias says, "If you don't want to be replaced by a machine, don't act like one." Machines are quite useful, but your mind is not a mere machine. Use it to its strength -- be creative, be non-linear. This empirical guy sounds a lot like a theoretical guy. Somewhere an ardent reductionist is cringing.

Great discussion of estimating information --
I give this book four stars just for the section on estimation -- can you calculate the number of barbers in the United States by using common sense and a few simple assumptions?How about the speed of the Mississippi river?As another reviewer has said, the book is not the most up to date and does not systematically address all aspects of the topic but provides some interesting insights that make it worth a look.

A History of AT&T
Though someone looking for a history of AT&T would be disappointed by this book, someone NOT looking for a history of AT&T may find the examples monotonous after a while (they were entertaining, but I was working on research -- I needed significant "thought"). Aside from the fact that the content is very dated, Penzias could have turned out a much more powerful book if he had started with his ending. ... Read more