How fascinating, I was wondering about this very topic weeks ago when we first talked. I didn't know how you could manage, and was a bit shy to ask!
Although computers and the internet have their dangers they are also such fantastic tools, I can't get the chauvinism that often is shown towards technology (although I live like a luddite for many things, I am not a gadget maniac). I am not into comics, but I love to write and play around with digital pictures. I'd be lost without my laptop.
I'm so old that Clockwork Orange and 1984 seem like ancient history! LOL I've seen the evolution of technology first hand working with IBM 360s for massive batching of data to create phone bills in NYC in the early 70s. This led to electronic switching which replaced enormous mechanical switches. Ultimately, they were able to miniaturize the processors and chips to where growth was exponential in terms of speed and capacity and this happened, it seemed, about every two or three months.
We all know what today's devices are capable of and I had a growing fear over the years that humans would become so dependent on technology that it would one day render us "irrelevant" in both the workplace and in nature's "food chain". With today's advent of AI (artificial intelligence) being as sophisitcated as it is, and with continued exponential growth in that field to where now massive computers are teaching themselves, we just might one day see scenarios play out similar to "Hal" the computer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001 Space Odyssey" written by a very futuristic Arthur Clarke and released in 1968. OMG, if you haven't seen this brilliant piece, it is one of the all time classics where it becomes "man vs. machine" or basically, AI gone wild! That was 49 years ago and so resembles things evolving today!!!
A side note was many who went to watch this movie dropped LSD beforehand for the imagery, art, music, and story line were mind blowing!!! We'd all go back to discuss the meaning of what we just witnessed for hours fueled by the effects of this psychedlic hallucinagen. But one does not need drugs to appreciate this wonderful masterpiece...and truly, the more you watch it, the more real it gets!!!
Oh, I went as "Wonder Woman" to more than one Halloween party back in the day!!! I soooo wanted to be her! (grin)
Traci xoxo
Traci you are wonder woman xxXxx The rest is a bit before my time.
Kubrick... saw most of his movies, but nothing, Kubrick and I don't get along. Fell asleep 3 times during The Shining, suffered through 2001 to the end, but gosh, it cost me! lol I thought I should like Eyes Wide Shut, hell there was Tom Cruise and Venetian masks, it should be easy on the eyes at least, I thought, but no, just not my cup of tea. There is something about Kubrick and flogging a scene to death....
As AI gone rebel go I prefer the Matrix, or even Battlestar Galactica. Hell, Number Six can mistreat me any time she wants :-)
LOL Crissie!!!
Katia, Kubrick will test your "intellect" always, or so say the numerous "pseudointellects" wandering the planet. It is what it is...you know what you're going to get. He is/was genious in his own way. I truly think "2001" was brilliant considering when it was made and the subject matter he worked with. Eyes Wide Shut was really "out there" and it was like watching a train wreck in that you cannot take your eyes off of it regardless of how slow or disturbing the scenes. Then of coure, you could always close them and catch up on needed sleep! LOL
Maybe you shoulld have watched "2001" under the influence! (grin)
Traci xoxo
AAh but the main issue with AI is it cannot make the intuiative leaps that a person can at the moment it would still go through a,b,c,d etc. but a person if they saw the pattern could be a,c,e,h etc.. You only have to look at the issues with driverless cars to also see that AI still has a ways to go & even today with coding a computer wants everything in a specific order where as a person as long as it works you are fine with it. Just my 2 penneth's worth.
Ideally if you are looking for a comic strip to look through then Misfile would be the 1 I'd recommend. It is about a young man that due to a filing error by angels in heaven wakes up one morning but is a girl who has her male memories & likes but is in a grils body.
Matt, I agree with you 100%. But if you follow developments in the field, you're seeing that people are working to develop that "intuativeness" necessary to rival humans. It just takes immense processing and storage power and speed. New technologies in the chip field are giving those developers hope that they are much, musch closer than ever before to achieving this.
Traci xoxo
Yes, I agree with you Tracy, the development of computers is itself developing so fast, it is hard to predict what may happen in the next few years.
Kubrick, lol, I suppose it's a flaw of my intellect that I find him so tiring? a couple of years ago some friends offered to introduce me to his wife (she has a holiday home in our village), and I politely declined.... can you imagine the awkward conversations, ".....sorry madam, but your husbansd's work regularly puts me to sleep, he might as well have been called Stanley Valium for all he ever did for me...." I don't know, I am not very suited to society I guess, lol.
No I understand how visionary and unique his work is (or at least some of it), but it's just not my brand of visionary.
Well, what can I say.
Yes, computers are very capable in certain areas and can outperform humans. But at present, they are used as a tool by humans in a similar manner as a hammer is used to drive nails. After all, a hammer easily outperforms a human in this particular task. The same is true of using a vessel such as a cup to hold water; it works a lot better than cupping your hands together. However, a computer is different in that its functionality intrudes into the thinking arena, or at least what I call pseudo-thinking. Will it surpass human intelligence? Perhaps--after all, human brains are required to fit within our skulls, wherea computers can be made much larger. However, there is one essential quality of the human pyche that may be hard to synthesize with a machine: motivation.
Ah! Saw the picture! While nowhere near blind I am fantastically shortsighted so I always magnify stuff on screen to between 110 and 130%. It makes things definitely more comfortable for me, especially when I am writing long stuff in Microsoft Word! Else I eventually find myself with my nose on the screen and a stiff back.
It's great you found a way to work this magic in a handy way; sometimes even if computers have the right tools they can be too clunky for effective use ... My old netbook was a clever little chap, but not very handy in that regard. My current laptop allows you to zoom in and out with one move on the touch pad, which is great, but, go figure, it only works for some programs, not all. And sometimes it works arsy-versy and the move for zoom-in makes you zoom out which tends to cause explosive "language" events, ahem.