HOME
*





Wetware (brain)
Wetware is a term drawn from the computer-related idea of hardware or software, but applied to biological life forms. Usage The prefix "wet" is a reference to the water found in living creatures. Wetware is used to describe the elements equivalent to hardware and software found in a person, especially the central nervous system (CNS) and the human mind. The term wetware finds use in works of fiction, in scholarly publications and in popularizations. The "hardware" component of wetware concerns the bioelectric and biochemical properties of the CNS, specifically the brain. If the sequence of impulses traveling across the various neurons are thought of symbolically as ''software'', then the physical neurons would be the ''hardware''. The amalgamated interaction of this ''software'' and ''hardware'' is manifested through continuously changing physical connections, and chemical and electrical influences that spread across the body. The process by which the ''mind'' and ''brain'' inte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Computer Hardware
Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the case, central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), monitor, mouse, keyboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, speakers and motherboard. By contrast, software is the set of instructions that can be stored and run by hardware. Hardware is so-termed because it is " hard" or rigid with respect to changes, whereas software is "soft" because it is easy to change. Hardware is typically directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system, although other systems exist with only hardware. Von Neumann architecture The template for all modern computers is the Von Neumann architecture, detailed in a 1945 paper by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. This describes a design architecture for an electronic digital computer with subdivisions of a processing unit consisting of an arithmetic log ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


1987 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1987. Events * January 2 – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton children's books are replaced by the British publisher with gnomes after complaints of a racial offence implication. *April – K. W. Jeter coins the term " Steampunk" in a letter published in '' Locus: the magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field''. *June – Virago Press of London publishes ''Down the Road, Worlds Away'', a collection of short stories ostensibly by Rahila Khan, a young Muslim woman living in England. Three weeks later, Toby Forward, an Anglican clergyman, admits to writing them and the publisher withdraws the book. "He, unlike the editors at Virago, had grown up in precisely the kind of area and social conditions that the book described.... Although the book never claimed to be other than a work of fiction, the publishers destroyed the stock still in the warehouse and recalled all unsold copies from the bookshops, thus t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Some Limits In Our Capacity For Processing Information
Some may refer to: *''some'', an English word used as a determiner and pronoun; see use of ''some'' *The term associated with the existential quantifier *"Some", a song by Built to Spill from their 1994 album ''There's Nothing Wrong with Love'' *Socialist-oriented market economy, the Vietnamese economic system occasionally abbreviated SOME *Social market economy, the German socioeconomic model abbreviated SOME *So Others Might Eat (SOME), a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization *SoMe, short for social media * ''Some'' (film), a 24 film * "Some" (song), a duet by Junggigo and Soyou *Some & Any Some & Any was a German pop duo, formed during the eighth season of the German television talent show '' Popstars''. The group consisted of then-18-year-old Vanessa Meisinger and 20-year-old half-Brazilian, half-Swiss Leonardo Ritzmann. The seas ...
, German pop duo {{disambig ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


George Armitage Miller
George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science. Miller began his career when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Rejecting this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a hero of American consciousness", according to Allen Ginsberg, and Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". As a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, Leary founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project after a revealing experience with magic mushrooms in Mexico. He led the Project from 1960 to 1962, testing the therapeutic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, which were legal in the U.S., in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. Other Harvard faculty questioned his research's scientific legitimacy and ethics because he took psychedelics along with his subjects and allegedly pressured students to join in. One of Leary's students, Robert Thurman, has denied that Leary pressured unwilling ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), education (such as medical or military training) and business (such as virtual meetings). Other distinct types of VR-style technology include augmented reality and mixed reality, sometimes referred to as extended reality or XR, although definitions are currently changing due to the nascence of the industry. Currently, standard virtual reality systems use either virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user's physical presence in a virtual environment. A person using virtual reality equipment is able to look around the artificial world, move around in it, and interact with virtual features or items. The effect is commonly created by VR headsets consis ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Amsterdam was founded at the mouth of the Amstel River that was dammed to control flooding; the city's name derives from the Amstel dam. Originally a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became a major world port during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when the Netherlands was an economic powerhouse. Amsterdam is the leading center for finance and trade, as well as a hub of production of secular art. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and many new neighborho ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Geert Lovink
Geert Lovink (born 1959, Amsterdam) is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose goals are to explore, document and feed the potential for socio-economical change of the new media field through events, publications and open dialogue. As theorist, activist and net critic, Lovink has made an effort in helping to shape the development of the web. Since 2004 Lovink is a researcher at the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) where he heads the Institute of Network Cultures. From 2007 till 2017 he was a Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School where he supervised five PhD students. From 2004-2013 he was an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the UvA Art History Department. The Chair (one day a week) is supported by the HvA. Lovink earned his master's degree in political science at the Univ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Arthur Kroker
Arthur Kroker (born 1945) is a Canadian author, editor, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture. Life and career He earned a PhD in political science from McMaster University in 1975. In addition to being a professor of political science at the University of Victoria, Kroker serves as director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC), located at the university. Kroker was appointed to the Canada Research Chair in technology, culture and theory in 2003. He is the editor for the online academic journal '' CTheory'', an international journal of theory, technology and culture. Kroker has been an outspoken critic of the transformation of the early internet into a consumer-driven system ("virtual class"). Austrian magazine Monochrom Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Avon Books
Avon Publications is one of the leading publishers of romance fiction. At Avon's initial stages, it was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. The shift in content occurred in the early 1970s with multiple Avon romance titles reaching and maintaining spots in bestseller lists, demonstrating the market and potential profits in romance publication. As of 2010, Avon is an imprint of HarperCollins. Early history (1941–1971) Avon Books was founded in 1941 by the American News Company (ANC) to create a rival to Pocket Books. They hired brother and sister Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams to establish the company. ANC bought out J.S. Ogilvie Publications, a dime novel publisher partly owned by both the Meyers, and renamed it "Avon Publications". They also got into comic books. "The early Avons were somewhat similar in appearance to the existing paperbacks of Pocket Books, resulting in an immediate and largely ineffective lawsuit by that company. Despite ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Ware Tetralogy
''The Ware Tetralogy'' is a series of four science fiction novels by author Rudy Rucker: ''Software'' (1982), '' Wetware'' (1988), ''Freeware'' (1997) and '' Realware'' (2000). The first two books both received the Philip K. Dick Award for best novel. The closest to the cyberpunk genre of all his works, the tetralogy explores themes such as rapid technological change, generational differences, consciousness, mortality and recreational drug use. In 2010, Prime Books published ''The Ware Tetralogy: Four Novels by Rudy Rucker'', which collects the entire series in a single paperback volume and includes an introduction by noted cyberpunk author William Gibson. The online version of ''The Ware Tetralogy'' was simultaneously released for free distribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivative License. Plot summary The events in the series are set in motion by Cobb Anderson, a computer scientist born in 1950 as part of the baby boomer generation. In the la ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Read-only Memory
Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing software that is rarely changed during the life of the system, also known as firmware. Software applications (like video games) for programmable devices can be distributed as plug-in cartridges containing ROM. Strictly speaking, ''read-only memory'' refers to memory that is hard-wired, such as diode matrix or a mask ROM integrated circuit (IC), which cannot be electronically changed after manufacture. Although discrete circuits can be altered in principle, through the addition of bodge wires and/or the removal or replacement of components, ICs cannot. Correction of errors, or updates to the software, require new devices to be manufactured and to replace the installed device. Floating-gate ROM semiconductor memory in the form of erasab ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]