Week 9 Entry

The video of the interview with Eno and Wright gave, I thought, a refreshing new viewpoint of technlogy. While Borgman makes a lot of valid points about the downside of techniology, and the risks of depending on it too heavily, it was nice to hear the opinion of two people who are excited about the positive possibilites technology offers. While I usually think of computers and computer programs as following a strict set of rules, or being very thoroughly controlled, it was interesting to listen to the two talking about programs they use setting a simple set of rules and essentiall letting the program run itself. It reminded me of a passage from a book I read for biological literature which talked about a computer program that simulated evolution by natural selection. Very simple programs were designed to accomplish simple tasks, and were then allowed to change in random ways. New programs more efficient at the tasks were preserved, and the others were deleted. As the process went on, the tasks required of the programs increased in complexity, and the programs became more and more complex. The experiment yielded programs many times more complex than the original ones, many of which were very similar to previously existing programs that accomplished the assigned tasks. There were also some very surprising programs produced, that accomplished their tasks in ways not thought of by any human program designers. This seems to be related to the theme of the discussion between Eno and Wright about the sometimes surprising complexity that can be generated by computers folowing only very simple rules.