Fluency Milestones XI “Computers Can Do Almost {Everything, Nothing}–Limits to Computation”

Snyder Chapter 23  Limits to Computation

This chapter was very interesting, because it brings up the question that most people have when it comes to computers–can computers think?  This answer is not definitive, but it is fairly easy to see that computers can do plenty and are pretty smart, but the person operating the machine must also be competent. One of the defining moments of computers “thinking” came when Deep Blue, an IBM computer defeated World Chess champion Garry Kasparov.  Engineers considered this a win for computers and programmers.  Programmers were able to use game trees and configure the computer to look as many as 50 moves ahead.   

When Deep Blue took on Karparov, it could compute over 200 million board moves per second.  Kasparov did defeat Deep Blue in the first match, but Deep Blue was improved and got its revenge in 1997 by defeating the Chess champion.  Deep Blue’s win does not mean computers are smarter than humans, but it did show what a massive database of knowledge could do and achieve.    Deep Blue knew what to do, but as many like to point out, the machine is chess specific.  It could not do any other functions.  Computers can only be as smart as though who program it and Deep Blue showed a computer can defeat a human, but it was isolated to that one event.

 Along with the epic Deep Blue/Kasparov battles, I learned about the major different between Macs and PCs and outmoded computers.  Obviously, Macs and PCs are completely different as fair as design goes, but they are also very different when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the operating system as well.  Macs andPCs have a different combination of instructions that are encoded differently.  These differences are not fundamental, but they are different when it comes to booting up and running the necessary programs and locating files on the hard disk.  The real difference between a Mac and a PC is that the operating systems do things very differently.  The customer software used to run these machines both operate completely differently in a Mac and a PC.  Macs and PCs are both easy to use and both of them can operate some of the same software, but there are fundamental differences.  It is up to the user to decide what is the best computer and operating system for them. 

Finally, I learned about why people consider some computers to be outmoded.    Speed is the main different between old and new computers.  New, faster software doesn’t mean a new computer is needed, a little patience will do the trick.  People normally give two reasons why they think old computers are outmoded.  The first is the hardware and software is not compatible with older machines and the second is software vendors simply don’t support older machines and people are forced to upgrade machines to go with the upgraded software.  Normally, it isn’t necessary to get new machines, because older machines will work, but many do it simply to save time and use the faster software.