Science Books

On Intelligence

Jeff Hawkins, the high-tech success story behind PalmPilots and the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, does a lot of thinking about thinking.

See also:

Mind & Brain

Computers & Math

Reference

In On Intelligence Hawkins juxtaposes his two loves--computers and brains--to examine the real future of artificial intelligence.

In doing so, he unites two fields of study that have been moving uneasily toward one another for at least two decades.

Most people think that computers are getting smarter, and that maybe someday, they'll be as smart as we humans are.

But Hawkins explains why the way we build computers today won't take us down that path.

He shows, using nicely accessible examples, that our brains are memory-driven systems that use our five senses and our perception of time, space, and consciousness in a way that's totally unlike the relatively simple structures of even the most complex computer chip.

Readers who gobbled up Ray Kurzweil's (The Age of Spiritual Machines and Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open will find more intriguing food for thought here.

For more information about the title On Intelligence, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence — How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us ... > read more

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology — For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his ... > read more

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a ... > read more

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software — An individual ant, like an individual neuron, is just about as dumb as can be. Connect enough of them together properly, though, and you get ... > read more

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Authors: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks

Date: Aug. 1, 2005

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