Author: Publisher:
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Languages : en
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Book Description
GOD AND GOLEM, INC
Author: God & Golem, Inc.
Author: Norbert WienerPublisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262730112
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 116
Book Description
The new and rapidly growing field of communication sciences owes as much to Norbert Wiener as to any one man. He coined the word for it—cybernetics. In God & Golem, Inc., the author concerned himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to religious issues.The first point he considers is that of the machine which learns. While learning is a property almost exclusively ascribed to the self-conscious living system, a computer now exists which not only can be programmed to play a game of checkers, but one which can "learn" from its past experience and improve on its own game. For a time, the machine was able to beat its inventor at checkers. "It did win," writes the author, "and it did learn to win; and the method of its learning was no different in principle from that of the human being who learns to play checkers. A second point concerns machines which have the capacity to reproduce themselves. It is our commonly held belief that God made man in his own image. The propagation of the race may also be interpreted as a function in which one living being makes another in its own image. But the author demonstrates that man has made machines which are "very well able to make other machines in their own image," and these machine images are not merely pictorial representations but operative images. Can we then say: God is to Golem as man is to Machines? in Jewish legend, golem is an embryo Adam, shapeless and not fully created, hence a monster, an automation.The third point considered is that of the relation between man and machine. The concern here is ethical. "render unto man the things which are man's and unto the computer the things which are the computer's," warns the author. In this section of the book, Dr. Wiener considers systems involving elements of man and machine. The book is written for the intellectually alert public and does not involve any highly technical knowledge. It is based on lectures given at Yale, at the Société Philosophique de Royaumont, and elsewhere.
God and Golem, Inc
Author: Norbert WienerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 99
Book Description
Invention
Author: Norbert WienerPublisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262731119
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
An insider's view of the history of discovery and invention.
James Sturm's America
Author: James SturmPublisher: Drawn and Quarterly
ISBN:
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
I. The revival : Cane Ridge, Kentucky, 1801 : thousands of pilgrims look towards heaven to find salvation -- II. Hundreds of feet below daylight : Solomon's Gulch, Idaho, 1886 : the last residents of a mining town continue their descent -- III. The golem's mighty swing : small town America, the early 1920s : a barnstorming Jewish baseball team create a golem to deliver them from their trials.
The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague
Author: Yehudah Yudl RozenbergPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030013472X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
This collection of interrelated stories about a sixteenth-century Prague rabbi and the golem he created became an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1909. So widely popular and influential was Yudl Rosenberg's book, it is no exaggeration to claim that the author transformed the centuries-old understanding of the creature of clay and single-handedly created the myth of the golem as protector of the Jewish people during times of persecution. In addition to translating Rosenberg's classic golem story into English for the first time, Curt Leviant also offers an introduction in which he sets Rosenberg's writing in historical context and discusses the golem legend before and after Rosenberg's contributions. Generous annotations are provided for the curious reader. The book is full of adventures, surprises, romance, suspense, mysticism, Jewish pride, and storytelling at its best. The Chief Rabbi of Prague, known as the Maharal, brings the golem Yossele to life to help the Jews fight false accusations of ritual murder-the infamous blood libel. More human, more capable, and more reliable as a protector than any golem imagined before, Rosenberg's Golem irrevocably changed one of the most widely influential icons of Jewish folklore.
Golem
Author: Maya BarzilaiPublisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147984845X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
2017 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Jewish Literature and Linguistics Honorable Mention, 2016 Baron Book Prize presented by AAJR A monster tour of the Golem narrative across various cultural and historical landscapes In the 1910s and 1920s, a “golem cult” swept across Europe and the U.S., later surfacing in Israel. Why did this story of a powerful clay monster molded and animated by a rabbi to protect his community become so popular and pervasive? The golem has appeared in a remarkable range of popular media: from the Yiddish theater to American comic books, from German silent film to Quentin Tarantino movies. This book showcases how the golem was remolded, throughout the war-torn twentieth century, as a muscular protector, injured combatant, and even murderous avenger. This evolution of the golem narrative is made comprehensible by, and also helps us to better understand, one of the defining aspects of the last one hundred years: mass warfare and its ancillary technologies. In the twentieth century the golem became a figure of war. It represented the chaos of warfare, the automation of war technologies, and the devastation wrought upon soldiers’ bodies and psyches. Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters draws on some of the most popular and significant renditions of this story in order to unravel the paradoxical coincidence of wartime destruction and the fantasy of artificial creation. Due to its aggressive and rebellious sides, the golem became a means for reflection about how technological progress has altered human lives, as well as an avenue for experimentation with the media and art forms capable of expressing the monstrosity of war. New Books Network interview with Maya Barzilai on Golem
Political Theory of the Digital Age
Author: Mathias RissePublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009255215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331
Book Description
This book investigates how artificial intelligence might influence our political practices and ideas, and how we should respond.
Golem Song
Author: Marc EstrinPublisher: Unbridled Books
ISBN: 9781936071944
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
By some incalculable force of human attraction, Alan Krieger has two lovers. A man of his girth and compulsion, a man who cannot stop talking and who believes the world to be completely irrational, should not take one companion for granted, much less two. Women who can tolerate his anger, his obsessions, and his antic clowning all at the same time are not easy to come by. But when the thought arises in Alan that he’s been “chosen” to deliver Jewish America from the threat of Anti-Semitism, then all his connections to reality fall away, including those to his lovers and his family. Recalling the folktale of the Golem—the Frankensteinian giant of clay that saved the Jews in 16th Century Prague—Alan lays out a plan of attack and then sets to making the most outrageous of preparations in the culture wars, in New York City at the turn of the millennium. Like each of the acclaimed Estrin novels that have preceded it, Golem Song is an allusive, manic, and wildly comic approach to some of the most serious and difficult cultural questions of our time.
Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series, with Engineering Applications
Author: Norbert WienerPublisher: Martino Fine Books
ISBN: 9781614275176
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 174
Book Description
2013 Reprint of 1949 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This is the second book by Norbert Wiener on time series and communication engineering. While the first one, "Cybernetics," treated the subject from a general standpoint and was more philosophical than mathematical, the present volume is more technical than theoretical, and forms a kind of companion piece to the first. It is intended as a tool for engineers working in the field of electrical communication and related subjects. The book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and three appendices. After explaining the general outline of the problem in the introduction, the author gives in Chapter I a review of generalized harmonic analysis which is necessary for the understanding of the following chapters. Chapters II and III are devoted to the problems of prediction and filtering respectively. In Chapter IV there is given a brief account of the theory of multiple prediction, that is, the theory of prediction when we deal with more than one time series at the same time. Finally, in Chapter V there is given a short discussion on the application of similar methods to a problem of approximate differentiation.
