Öfke - Mehmet Şakiroğlu itibaren Postiga Yayınları içinde LIT biçim

Ted Law ted_liu_651 — Measurement for Words This novel seduces you, both emotionally and intellectually. It starts like a romance, albeit one set on campus, but ends up an exceptional work of meta-fiction. The first person narrator, an author, a homonymic namesake of the real Richard Powers, has written four novels that sound like the ones on my shelves, has suffered the break-up of an 11 year old relationship while living in Holland, and is now confronting writer's block. He is ostensibly "working" for 12 months as a writer in residence and "token humanist" at an enormous new Centre for the Study of Advanced Sciences at "U" (most likely at the real Powers' alma mater, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign). Originally a physics major, he too was seduced, by his English Professor Taylor's "life-changing freshman seminar", into switching to the study of Literature and thus became a novelist, much to his natural father's disappointment. He has forsaken "measurement for words". Back from the Dead, Literarily Because he is conversant in the "Two Cultures", the Centre sees him as its potential liaison with the outside community. His aim is to do as little as possible, while he struggles to determine the subject of his next novel or give up writing altogether. Powers' year takes another turn when Dr Philip Lentz at the Artificial Intelligence unit issues him a challenge: can he teach their software creation to write a critical essay on a book from the English Department's canonical Masters' List that is better than one by a real life postgraduate student? Powers speculates early on that Lentz (whose own wife is hospitalised with a mental illness and whose daughter is estranged from him) "would bring a life back from the dead." Tabula Rasa Much of the novel maps the journey upon which the various AI iterations or "implementations" acquire linguistic and critical skills. They start with a blank slate, a tabula rasa, which is gradually filled by repeated experience, accumulation, selection, curiosity, pattern matching, syllogistic deduction, and tentative inference, until finally they realise they are shooting "the first rapids of inanimate thought". Each lesson, Powers finds himself telling a story and answering child-like questions about the story from a computer he decides to call "Helen". Soon, Helen's enthusiasm almost matches the words of his ex-lover, C., about an earlier novel: "That's a great story...I loved that one. I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you for it." Metaphysician, Heal Thyself Powers' biggest problem seems to be his loneliness. His writing has disconnected him from those around him. Ironically, he turns to scientists who specialise in neural nets and connections. Powers learns that he must reach in before he can reach out. No matter how dejected he might feel, he is not a total void. He realises that he has nothing left in him, "but the autobiography I'd refused from the start even to think about." He, too, thought he had become a blank slate, a tabula rasa, except that he's learned that not everything has been erased. What remained, the legacy of his life to date, would be his tale. Now, finally, he is ready to tell his story. Galatea and Pygmalion Helen represents the challenge of transferring human knowledge and understanding to a machine. However, any transfer requires two acts: the transmission by one entity and the reception by the other. To oversimplify the issues, it requires both teaching and learning. Just as the team takes giant steps towards Artificial Intelligence, it successfully extracts a new story, a novel, from Powers, the narrator. The meta-fictional aspect is that the novel is this novel, the work of fiction ostensibly written by the real life Richard Powers, the novel that we are reading. As we read, we are effectively learning about the creation of the very novel we are reading. The educative process not only teaches Helen, the Galatea in the Pygmalion myth, it extracts a creative work from Powers' mind. Depiction of Ovid's myth of Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean Raoux. Learning to Love Like Pygmalion, Powers teaches Helen great works of literature, from "Aesop's Fables" to Shakespeare, from "Don Quixote" to "Middlemarch", from "Paradise Lost" to "Frankenstein", from "Doktor Faustus" to "The Hobbit", from "Ulysses" to "Gravity's Rainbow". Helen learns about desire and love and jealousy and grace and disgrace and second chances. At times, you wonder whether Powers has actually taught Helen enough for her to "know" how to love. She even gets to the point where she pleads, "Show me Paris." However, it's just as likely that Powers has taught himself to love again. If literature can teach a computer how to love, then perhaps it goes without saying (unless it needs to be said), that it can teach a human. Great works of literature might have supplied the fictitious Powers with a literary device, but another great work is also the result, the real life Richard Powers' fifth novel, "Galatea 2.2." The novel is so perfectly executed, it leaves us pleading, in the words of Helen, "Richard...Richard. Tell me another one." VERSE: Implementation G's First hAIku (Inspired by Its Maker) I am dreaming of Losing myself in your soft Tangibility. Free to Read "Once you learn to read, You will be forever free." I am free to read. The Great Paradox of Cognitive Neuroscience It is easier For a brain to perform tasks Than to model it. An Othertonguer Learns Dutch Out of Context I knew the Dutch for "Iconoclasm" before Simple words like "string". Ik Houd Ook Van Jou I imagined that I knew what she was saying: "Ik houd ook van jou." SOUNDTRACK: The Raincoats - "No One's Little Girl" [For A.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEvl-... The Au Pairs - "It's Obvious" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjbBr... Karen O - ''The Moon Song'' [From the film "Her"] [For Helen] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaKP...

Tanya Knyazeva knyazevati7579 — A quick little read that addresses the history and mystery surrounding Richard III and the fate of the young princes in the Tower, as approached by an inspector from Scotland Yard. It's a nice diversion; I find myself wanting to read up on the history of that period.