inessential by Brent Simmons

Analog thinking

I read with some happiness today that Marvin Minsky declared Artificial Intelligence research “brain-dead.”

You’re going to think I’m weird. Maybe this is surprising coming from a computer programmer.

But listen, the only thing that makes microprocessors tolerable is that they don’t really think.

On Thursday Robert Scoble wrote about how analog thinking is Microsoft’s biggest enemy. And the biggest enemy of Linux and so on.

As I read that, I was thinking about how much I love pen and paper. And record albums. And shoes. And grass.

The analog world is made up of atoms of poetry. The digital world is made up of bits.