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Understand (story)
"Understand" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Ted Chiang, published in 1991. It was nominated for the 1992 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and won the 1992 Asimov’s Reader Poll. The story has been recorded by Rhashan Stone and broadcast as a four-part series on BBC Radio 7. In June 2024, it was revealed the story is being adapted into a TV show with Gus Van Sant being attached to direct. Plot The story follows a man who is given an experimental drug to heal brain damage caused by anoxia after he nearly drowns. The drug regenerates his damaged neurons and has the unintended side effect of exponentially improving his intellect and motor skills. As he gets smarter and smarter, he is pursued by several government agencies. Eventually he receives a message from another super-intelligent test subject and enters into conflict with him. See also *Superintelligence *Transhumanism *Flowers for Algernon ''Flowers for Algernon'' is a short story by American author ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Understand By Ted Chiang
Understanding is a cognitive process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to use concepts to model that object. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior. Understanding is often, though not always, related to learning concepts, and sometimes also the theory or theories associated with those concepts. However, a person may have a good ability to predict the behavior of an object, animal or system—and therefore may, in some sense, understand it—without necessarily being familiar with the concepts or theories associated with that object, animal, or system in their culture. They may have developed their own distinct concepts and theories, which may be equivalent, better or worse than the recognized standard concepts and theories of their cul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypoxia (medical)
Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of an adequate oxygen supply at the tissue (biology), tissue level. Hypoxia may be classified as either ''Generalized hypoxia, generalized'', affecting the whole body, or ''local'', affecting a region of the body. Although hypoxia is often a pathological condition, variations in arterial oxygen concentrations can be part of the normal physiology, for example, during strenuous physical exercise. Hypoxia differs from hypoxemia and anoxemia, in that hypoxia refers to a state in which oxygen present in a tissue or the whole body is insufficient, whereas hypoxemia and anoxemia refer specifically to states that have low or no Oxygen saturation (medicine), oxygen in the blood. Hypoxia in which there is complete absence of oxygen supply is referred to as anoxia. Hypoxia can be due to external causes, when the breathing gas is hypoxic, or internal causes, such as reduced effectiveness of gas transfer in the lung ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smart Drugs In Fiction
''SMart'' was a British CBBC television programme based on art, which began in 1994 and ended in 2009. The programme was recorded at BBC Television Centre in London. Previously it had been recorded in Studio A at Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham. The format is similar to the Tony Hart programmes ''Take Hart'' and ''Hartbeat''. The show was revamped into an hour-long show in 2007; from 1994 to 2006 it was previously a 25-minute show. From 1994 to 2005, the show also featured Morph (character), Morph, originally from ''Take Hart''. The series run featured 199 episodes, last airing on 11 August 2011. Production The BBC noticed the success of ''Art Attack'' with Neil Buchanan for CITV which started in 1990 and decided to create their own art show that was accessible to children similar to ''Art Attack''. The original theme tune was composed by Kjartan Poskitt, famous for the ''Murderous Maths'' series of books. From 2003, a different tune was used, written by Steve Brown (composer) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Award For Best Novelette–winning Works
Hugo or HUGO may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Hugo'' (film), a 2011 film directed by Martin Scorsese * Hugo Award, a science fiction and fantasy award named after Hugo Gernsback * Hugo (franchise), a children's media franchise based on a troll ** ''Hugo'' (game show), a television show that first ran from 1990 to 1995 ** ''Hugo'' (video game), several video games released between 1991 and 2000 * Hugo (album), a 2022 album by Loyle Carner People and fictional characters * Victor Hugo, a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. * Hugo (name), including lists of people with Hugo as a given name or surname, as well as fictional characters * Hugo Cabral (born 1988), Brazilian footballer * Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela 1999-2013 * Hugo Gernsback, Luxembourgish American publisher (born 1884) * Hugo (musician), Thai American actor and singer-songwriter Chula Chak Charbonnages (born 1981) * Hugo (footballer, born 1964), Brazilian footballer * Hugo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1991 Short Stories
It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving fifteen sovereign republics and the CIS in its place. In July 1991, India abandoned its policies of dirigism, license raj and autarky and began extensive liberalisation to its economy. This increased GDP but also increased income inequality over the next two decades. A UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations fought against Iraq, which had invaded and annexed Kuwait in the previous year, 1990. The conflict would be called the Gulf War and would mark the beginning of a since-constant American military presence in the Middle East. The clash between Serbia and the other Yugoslav republics would lead into the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars, which ran through the rest of the decade. In the context of the apartheid, the year after the liberation of political prisoner Nelson Mandela, the Parliament of South Africa repeals the Population Registration Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Short Stories
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world, and the social sciences, which study individuals and societies. While referred to as the formal sciences, the study of logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science are typically regarded as separate because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method as their main methodology. Meanwhile, applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine. The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to the Bronze Age in Egypt and Mesopotamia (). Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Greek natural philo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flowers For Algernon
''Flowers for Algernon'' is a short story by American author Daniel Keyes, which he later expanded into a novel and adapted for film and other media. The short story, written in 1958 and first published in the April 1959 issue of ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'', won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960. The novel was published in 1966 and was joint winner of that year's Nebula Award for Best Novel (with '' Babel-17''). Algernon is a laboratory mouse who has undergone surgery to increase his intelligence. The story is told by a series of progress reports written by Charlie Gordon, the first human subject for the surgery, and it touches on ethical and moral themes such as the treatment of the mentally disabled. Although the book has often been challenged for removal from libraries in the United States and Canada, sometimes successfully, it is frequently taught in schools around the world and has been adapted many times for television, theater, radio and as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transhumanism
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the human enhancement, enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the technoethics, ethics of using such technologies. Some transhumanists speculate that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings of such vastly greater abilities as to merit the label of posthuman#Transhumanism, posthuman beings. Another topic of transhumanist research is how to protect humanity against existential risks from Existential risk from artificial general intelligence, artificial general intelligence, asteroid impact, gray goo, high-energy particle collision experiments, natural or synthetic pandemic, and nuclear warfare. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superintelligence
A superintelligence is a hypothetical intelligent agent, agent that possesses intelligence surpassing that of the brightest and most intellectual giftedness, gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of advanced problem-solving systems that narrow AI, excel in specific areas (e.g., superintelligent Neural machine translation, language translators or engineering assistants). Nevertheless, a general purpose superintelligence remains hypothetical and its creation may or may not be triggered by an Technological singularity#Intelligence explosion, intelligence explosion or a technological singularity. University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines ''superintelligence'' as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". The program Fritz (chess), Fritz falls short of this conception of superintelligence—even though it is much better than humans at chess—because Fritz cannot outperform hum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor Skills
A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and brain have to all work together. The goal of motor skill is to optimize the ability to perform the skill at the rate of success, precision, and to reduce the energy consumption required for performance. Performance is an act of executing a motor skill or task. Continuous practice of a specific motor skill will result in a greatly improved performance, which leads to motor learning. Motor learning is a relatively permanent change in the ability to perform a skill as a result of continuous practice or experience. A fundamental movement skill is a developed ability to move the body in coordinated ways to achieve consistent performance at demanding physical tasks, such as found in sports, combat or personal locomotion, especially those unique ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neurons
A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural network in the nervous system. They are located in the nervous system and help to receive and conduct impulses. Neurons communicate with other cells via synapses, which are specialized connections that commonly use minute amounts of chemical neurotransmitters to pass the electric signal from the presynaptic neuron to the target cell through the synaptic gap. Neurons are the main components of nervous tissue in all Animalia, animals except sponges and placozoans. Plants and fungi do not have nerve cells. Molecular evidence suggests that the ability to generate electric signals first appeared in evolution some 700 to 800 million years ago, during the Tonian period. Predecessors of neurons were the peptidergic secretory cells. They eventually ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American filmmaker, photographer, painter, and musician. He has earned acclaim as an independent film, independent auteur. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures. His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. He made his feature-length directorial debut film ''Mala Noche'' (1985). He earned acclaim for a string of independent films such as the crime drama ''Drugstore Cowboy'' (1989), the adventure film ''My Own Private Idaho'' (1991), and the black comedy ''To Die For'' (1995). He earned Academy Award for Best Director nominations for the drama ''Good Will Hunting'' (1997), and the biographical film ''Milk (2008 American film), Milk'' (2008), both of which also received Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Picture nominations. Van Sant directed the psychological drama ''Elephant (2003 film), Elephant'' (2003), a film based on the Columbine High School massac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
