This volume is a theoretical and practical approach to the design of computer technology.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Thoughtful and Brilliant:
Understanding Computers and Cognition is an excellent book giving the right background and walks you nicely to understand all the notion of Speech act, Intention driven comversations and how these can be translated to a computer software. The book is not easy to read though (this is the only reason I gave it 4 stars and not 5).
But, those who are interested in this domain and are looking to better understand the academic theory behind it would find the book extremely helpful.
What are We to Make of Computers, and Computers Make of Us:
Winograd and Flores' `Understanding Computers and Cognition' proposes that the rationalist tradition in AI must be replaced by a hermeneutic approach. Associating the rationalist tradition with the goal of building a human mind, the authors propose that a hermeneutic approach must adopt the goal of constructing prostheses which magnify the human mind. This paper argues that what AI needs is not so much a hermeneutic approach as a better appreciation of biology and psychology. Understanding Computers and... more info
Not Just Another Pretty Face:
A few years ago Byte Magazine named this one of the 10 most important books in the history of the computer industry. Flores was asked to keynote the 50th anniversary meeting of the ACM on the strength of the work he has done, some of which is shown here.
I am a little surprised not to find a review here that shows awareness of what this book is and was intended to do -- to turn those concerned with the design of the role of computers in society into a new direction. The book offers a fundamental... more info
A little disappointed:
I read the 1986 or 87 version of this book and am of a software/AI background. I didn't follow the biological material that well - either I was being dense or it just wasn't clearly written. I thought the book was repetitious (my chief complaint). Some of the concepts discussed include: "breakdown" (humans become aware of thing X only when something goes awry in which the X is involved), "thrownness" (humans don't rationally consider all possibilities and make perfect decisions because situations they are... more info
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