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Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory
Reveals how the human mind assimilates and retrieves knowledge and explores new concepts in artificial intelligence in an attempt to close the gap between human and computer-based memory
253 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
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October 13, 2018
What does it mean to be 'intelligent'? Roger Schank, an expert in Artificial Intelligence and psychology, hints here towards an answer using an original approach. If nowadays we are capable of conceiving ultra-complicated machines able, for instance, to solve complex mathematical problems, these machines however still lack a deeply human feature: telling stories that is, articulate thoughts and relationships with others through tales.
From religious myths to the therapeutic benefits of opening up, from dreams to memories and even the whole entertainment industry (books, movies, music...) we human beings indeed have a deep need to create and tell stories and, through such stories, deal with the outside world. To be intelligent then, would be this ability to tell stories and understand whose of others; even better, make sense of our experiences and others' to explain the world surrounding us -interpret events.
From then on, the author insists on the importance of memory and try to get a better understanding of how it works. Which informations do we 'decide' to store? Why? How then do we access those informations in order to, in light of our past experiences, establish links with a situation, make predictions, and act accordingly (after all, one of the clear signs of a remarkable intelligence is the ability to make connections and see analogies where they are not obvious, thus being creative and/ or solving problems)?
This book is fascinating. Not only does it shows how important are stories in our way of thinking and interacting with the outside world (beyond psychology and cognitive sciences, interesting links can be made with linguistics too) but, also, because it demonstrates that the way we articulate our stories, what we decide to remember, how, and how we relate it, all are crucial key to understand how do we think ourselves and project ourselves towards others -in a word: how memory is the key underlying our identity.
Extremely accessible, fascinating and focusing on stories, memories and their importance to understand what intelligence is, Roger Schank adds here an interesting piece to the puzzle of what is human nature. One of these impossible to put-down type of read!
From religious myths to the therapeutic benefits of opening up, from dreams to memories and even the whole entertainment industry (books, movies, music...) we human beings indeed have a deep need to create and tell stories and, through such stories, deal with the outside world. To be intelligent then, would be this ability to tell stories and understand whose of others; even better, make sense of our experiences and others' to explain the world surrounding us -interpret events.
From then on, the author insists on the importance of memory and try to get a better understanding of how it works. Which informations do we 'decide' to store? Why? How then do we access those informations in order to, in light of our past experiences, establish links with a situation, make predictions, and act accordingly (after all, one of the clear signs of a remarkable intelligence is the ability to make connections and see analogies where they are not obvious, thus being creative and/ or solving problems)?
This book is fascinating. Not only does it shows how important are stories in our way of thinking and interacting with the outside world (beyond psychology and cognitive sciences, interesting links can be made with linguistics too) but, also, because it demonstrates that the way we articulate our stories, what we decide to remember, how, and how we relate it, all are crucial key to understand how do we think ourselves and project ourselves towards others -in a word: how memory is the key underlying our identity.
Extremely accessible, fascinating and focusing on stories, memories and their importance to understand what intelligence is, Roger Schank adds here an interesting piece to the puzzle of what is human nature. One of these impossible to put-down type of read!
Displaying 1 of 1 review