Eliza Effect
This program reminded me of Siri on the iPhone. The only difference really is that Siri has a hole search engine behind her that she can access and provide a possible answer to a question. I caught on right away to the programs style of rephrasing questions and I was surprised that it could fool individuals for a significant amount of time. I was also surprised that the creator of Eliza was not as pleased that he had fooled people into thinking it was an actual artificial intelligence. He seemed to think that human capacity for interaction would always exceed computers, which I would agree with. But interestingly humans are able to create technology that can “think” and computer greater than the human mind. Could humanity and computational ability be combined to create a supper force that was capable of reason and theorizing greater than any individual human or computer.
Waiting for Godot
I was nto so impressed by the plot but there were a few moments in the dialoge that got me thinking. To start the two characters epitomize my view of theater ignorance. I feel there is a tendency to have two characters reacting to different situations and avoiding natural human interaction in order to create a more unusual situation. Estragon needed help with his shoe, Vladimir would not focus on his friend. Instead he discussed the bible and other philosophical nonsense. This would not happen in real life but makes for an interesting interaction. Also the rest of the play could have been condensed into about 10 lines of dialoge if it were written for modern times. I was not a fan on this play but I attempted to understand the situation and these characters, to no avail. The one line I liked in the whole thing was Pozzo’s talking about how there is only a set amount of tears and laughter in the world and that our population had increased. Does this mean there are more tears and laughter in the world or more people without any serious emotional reactions to life. I would suspect the latter. Can someone hog either of these emotions? That could make for an interesting story.
