Can we handle it?

This text is about Marshall McLuhan and his work on the connection between humans and machines, how the machines affect us. He describes how us humans has been affected of the machines. His is talking about a state of numbness. To illustrate this is uses the Greek myth of Narcissus.

All the technical devices have become an extension of the humans. These extensions has become a part of our every day life, it has become natural. If we take a step back and look at all the technical devices we use every day, we see it is in almost any action we carry out. We have become totally dependent to the technical devices.
McLuhan uses the Narcissus myth to illustrate how a technological extension of the self can create a state of numbness.
Like our car is our extension of the foot, almost every technical device is an extension of us. When we first have the technical devices we get addicted. If you by a fancy care you feel more pressure to drive it, because now you have the opportunity. We see the same with television. We look at programs that it is not necessary, just pure entertaining. Time that you had planed to do other things is cancelled. Maybe we did not get more time by buying the car, or become more enlighten or more happy by buying that television. “Such amplification is bearable by the nervous system only through numbness or blocking of perception”.
Mc Luhan looks at the central nervous system like an electric network that coordinates the various media of senses. In general he compare the human body with a machine.
The humans have become a tool for the machines to reproduce Mc Luhan says.
An interesting fact is that during war times we have seen the greatest advances in technology.
Is it in the interest of the machines that we go to war so they can is powerful enough to start reproduce them selves. (Matrix)

Touring and von Neumann – “the long way to the digital computer”

This text is about Alan Touring and John von Neumann. These has played an enormous role in the evolution end development of computation, artificial intelligent and cyberspace. The basics of threes work are Turing’s Touring Machine and von Neumann’s Design for Computers.

The Touring machine is a creation of logic and mathematics. It can also be seen as a game. With games we enter another world, the game world. The only thing that means something is the rules of the game. We must play and follow the rules of the game. As games, the Turing Machine is what is described in the book, -a logically self-contained world. The machine consists of two parts:

• A finite set of rules

• A tape of unlimited length where changeable information can be stored.

With the Turing Machine the only way the player can take initiative is through the input. With this machine Touring draw up the lines for today’s digital commuters.

Von Neumann’s computer builds on the principles of the Touring machine.
In Von Neumann’s computer the programs and data are stored in the same way, as strings of binary digits. That which makes von Neumann’s stored program-computer so powerful is the logical unity. It made the computer versatile, new programs can easily be loaded into the machine, and each program makes the computer into a new machine. In other words, new setts of problems, requires new setts of “computers”.
With the von Neumann’s computer logic and electronics is put together.