Please Update This Page for Each Week's Assignments.
Last Update:  June 19, 2001.

Week One:

1. Study the Glossary of Geek to learn some of the jargon.
2. "From Two Small Nodes, a Mighty Web Has Grown."  This is on the New York Times site, you must be a subscriber to the Times, which is part of the first assignment.  This article, written in a traditional essay style, is worth studying carefully.
3. The Preface and the chapter Toward a Global Brain from the book The Global Brain Awakens by Peter Russell.  You will find links to the Preface and the Toward a Global Brain chapter on the introductory page.  This is by one of the first visionaries to anticipate the development of a "Global Brain."  This is largely a review of points made in the movie we read.
4. If you can't be in class for the Triumph of the Nerds movie, read the online transcript.

1. What is Chaos, a five-part online course for everyone.  This, posted by a physicist in Texas, gives a general overview of "chaos theory" - a way of thinking that has become practical with the availability of computers to process tremendous amounts of information.  It is a philosophical framework that helps us to understand highly complex phenomena such as the weather, the economy and the human mind.  Note:  The original of this document was prepared for online reading, but I reformatted it for printing.  which do you prefer?  What does this suggest about the extent to which the use of Power Point and other presentation software  is shaping the way we think.  What differences do you perceive reading the document in these two formats?  Your writing assignment for this course will be to prepare a WEB presentation.
2. "The Essence of Mind and How to Program It," some excerpts from the manuscript of a book your instructor Ted Goertzel is helping his son Ben Goertzel to complete.   We've tried to put it into a breezy, autobiographical style, but there are a lot of heavy ideas here.  We will spend a good deal of time in class on this material.

1. Kevin Gurney's discussion of the Von Neumann Machine, Neural Networks, and his  summary of the differences between Neural Net and traditional Von Neumann machine computers.
2. A review of "The Advent of the Algorithm" by David Berlinski.  This explains what an "algorithm" is.  The last three paragraphs of the review are not necessary for us.
3. Webmind's Digital Environment.  This covers basic material on programming and operating systems.  This is material I will cover in class.
4. Look over the "Pseudo-Code" from three Artificial Intelligence algorithms from The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil.  This will give you an idea of what an algorithm looks like.  An algorithm is a set of detailed instructions for a computation which can be done by a computer.  You should understand the fundamental differences between the three kinds of algorithms and be prepared to answer multiple choice questions about them.
•  Recursive (rule-based) Algorithm
•  Neural Net Algorithm
•  Evolutionary Algorithm
5.  Webmind, the next step in AI?  Read "Our History"  and "Core Technology" from the Webmind site.  Also read:  "Intelligenesis Faces Dim Future" from Wired Magazine.

1. Thomas Middlehoff Has a Hunch  (investing in Napster).
2. AOL Plans Digital Smorgasboard.  (if you want to print this, click on "printer-friendly format"
3. Bioinformatics.
4.  U.S. Losing World Status as a Leader in Climate Research.
5. The Premature Obituary of the Book:  Why Literature?  by Mario Vargas Llosa.
6. The Gates of Power  by Robert J. Samuelson.
7. Note:  I took Ben's article on Genomics off the assigned reading, too much detail.