Can Computers Think? :: essays papers

Can Computers Think? In order to answer this question thinking must first be defined. Thinking is something that most scientists still don’t have a concrete definition of. The human brain is a very complex entity and we still don’t completely understand what happens when thoughts are processed. Scientists know that the brain is comprised of neurons that send signals to each other but the actual details are still not known. Bearing this in mind it is very hard to say whether or not something is thinking without a clear definition. The best I can do is to offer my own definition of thinking. I say thinking involves taking in information, making decisions, and being able to learn. Given this definition, it is my opinion that computers can think. Computers can take in information, make decisions, and they are beginning to learn. Comparing, ordering, remembering, storing, duplicating, choosing, These are all actions that require some thought process. Computers can do all these things, and while comparing a 1 against a 2 may not seem like a big deal, it does require a thought process. The computer must know the value of what is comparing, then use judgment to decide which one is bigger, and which one is smaller. And computers can do much more than compare two numbers. They can compare letters, words, phrases, and more. To see computers thinking you can simply go to an internet search engine, such as yahoo.com. Yahoo accepts information when you type in your search criteria. For example, lets say you want to search for information on artificial intelligence. You type in â€Å"artificial intelligence† into the text box and Yahoo takes that text and compares it to the text of millions of pages located in it’s database. It locates the pages that contain information that matches your search and displays those pages in order according to the closest match. Yahoo has just done many things that involve thinking. It has compared your search criteria with the contents of millions of web pages. Yahoo has ranked these comparisons according to the closest match, and it has ordered these pages according to rank. Comparing, ordering, and ranking all require thinking. And these are all tasks that the computer is able to do. This may not seem like very complex thinking, but never the less thes e simple tasks do require thinking.

Lumber-Room Essay

lumber-room The story under analysis was written by Hector Munro, a British novelist and a short-story writer. After his parents’ death he was brought up by a grandmother and two aunts, one of them was a woman of ungovernable temper, of fierce likes and dislikes, imperious and a moral coward. She was the last person who should have been in charge of children. The character of the aunt in The Lumber-Room is Aunt Augusta to the life. The story is about a little boy Nikolas who lives with his cruel aunt, brother and cousins.One day he commits the offence thus bringing the punishment upon himself, but he’s not upset as he is intended to sneak into the lumber-room. He plays trick with his aunt and finally gets into the forbidden paradise. The main idea of this story is the conflict between unchangeable conventional reality and poetry and intellectual freedom, between dogmatic, pedantic, philistine mind and poetic imagination. The story is a 3-person narration interlaced with inner thoughts and descriptive passages. The prevailing mood is rather positive, ironical and highly emotional.The text under study can be divided into 4 logically complete parts. The first part can be entitled â€Å"the 1 part of the plan†. Nickolas is not going with his small brother and his cousins to the Jagborough sands as his aunt has punished him for his disgraceful conduct at breakfast when he refused to eat his wholesome bread-and milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. The author’s attitude to the aunt is revealed with the help of the antonomasia â€Å"older and wiser and better people† and the high-flown adjectives â€Å"wholesome and frivolous†.Nickolas is shown as a very wise and clever boy for his age. In the following paragraph the author resorts to some bookish words such as â€Å"alleged†, â€Å"profoundly in error†, â€Å"utmost assurance† and long sentences to make the reader feel the st yle of aunt’s thoughts and haughty treatment of the children. Apart from Nickolas his aunt is described rather directly; she’s shown as self-confident and self-righteous person who can never admit her mistake. Her false piety is depicted by ironical use of religious words, such as â€Å"sin† and â€Å"depravity†.Judicial and military terminology such as â€Å"rigorously debarred†, â€Å"skilled tactician† conveys the tense atmosphere in the aunt and boy’s relations. At the time of children’s departure N drops a few decent tears. But he isn’t upset as this is just a part of his plan. The second part can be entitled as â€Å"the 2 part of the plan†. N is forbidden to go into the gooseberry garden as he’s in disgrace. And his aunt is going to keep an eye on it. But N himself feels perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in the gooseberry garden at the same time. And with the help of the zeugma the author co ntributes humorous effect in the text.The reader can trace the opposition between the aunt and the boy, which is again reproduced by the military terms, such as â€Å"sorties†, â€Å"operations†, â€Å"sentry-duty†, â€Å"unauthorized intrusion†. This idea also appears in the different attitude to the gooseberry garden. For aunt it is a forbidden paradise and for N it’s just a mere material pleasure. The descriptive passage of the aunt shows her as a woman of few ideas, with immense power of concentration. So, during N’s aunt duty, the boy gets the key, which opens the door of the lumber-room. The third part can be entitled â€Å"in the lumber-room†.N gets into the lumber-room and everything is new for him. In the first paragraph we see the repetition of the word â€Å"it†, which indicates Nikolas’s strong desire to get into the lumber-room. It was carefully sealed but this fact just stirred his curiosity. With the help of the metaphor â€Å"unimagined treasure† and description of the lumber-room (it was dimly lit), the author creates the mysterious atmosphere. Nicholas’s aunt is shown as rather conservative and mean as she prefer to consign things to dust and damp to preserve them and not to spoil.The metaphorical epithet â€Å"living breathing story† is used to show that Nickolas was impressionable, imaginative, full of creative ideas with poetic nature. It is understood indirectly through Nicholas’s attitude to the tapestry picture, which he sees for the first time but creates a vivid fairytale with a great number of small details. And the questions used in this paragraph indicate the dynamically developing plot of the fairytale in the N’s mind. The metaphorical epithet â€Å"golden minutes† is used to show that the time Nickolas spends in the lumber-room is very precious.When N finishes with the picture he notices other objects of delight and interest. The great number of epithets used in this part such as: objects of delight, (claiming his) instant attention, quaint candlesticks, undreamed-of creatures and the metaphorical expression â€Å"for the eyes to feast on† – emphasizes the fact that N isn’t used to such unusual things and it makes the opposition to the things in the house, which are â€Å"bare† and â€Å"cheerless†, dull and shapeless. The use of the exclamatory marks shows highly emotional state of the boy.Suddenly, the scream and then shriek of the aunt come from the gooseberry garden. But N smiles as he feels his victory in the war. Being skilled tactician he restores things to their places, shakes some dust on them, creeps from the room, locks the door and replaces the key exactly where he had found it. He saunters into the garden considering himself the winner of the battle. The 4th part can be entitled as â€Å"The rebellion†. Nickolas hears his aunt’s voice from the gooseberry garden where she gets into the rain-water tank while searching for him and she can’t get out as the sides are slippery.She asks him to help but he says that he isn’t to go into the garden and suspects her being the Evil One that tempts him to be disobedient. We see now that Nickolas pronounces the aunt’s usual phrase and thus fights her with her own weapon. This idea is proved with the using the metaphor â€Å"the prisoner in the tank†. So, the person who rescues the aunt is a kitchemaid. During the evening tea there is fearsome silence. The children are disappointed with the trip as there was the tide and there was no sands to play on and the metaphor punitive expedition contributes the state of the children.The aunt suffers the situation in the tank and only Nickolas, who is to be in disgrace is satisfied and thinks about the continuation of the story pictured in his mind while watching tapestry in the lumber-room. The story ends again with the antithesis of unchangeable conventional reality and poetry and intellectual freedom. On the whole this text appeals to me as it shows the problems of human nature and children up-bringing. The aunt is a conventional person who tries to keep everything as it is, without any change.She has no joy in her life and she brings up the children in the way that leads them to the same attitude to the world. But in spite of this, N, a young but extremely wise and clever boy, sees the things from the different side. He is very curious; he enjoys the world and tries to broaden his horizon. This problem of upbringing is still quite acute and the story helps to see it from another side. Moreover, the author makes an abundant usage of different stylistic devices which produce ironical and humorous effect and helps to ridicule such way of up-bringing through the character of the aunt and this makes the story even more vivid.

Advantages of Playing Video Games - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 5 Words: 1352 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2019/05/07 Category Entertainment Essay Level High school Tags: Video Games Essay Did you like this example? Have you ever been comfortably relaxing playing any video games during your free time and wondered what is happening to your body while playing ? Majority would say video games would rot your brain, make you lazy or even become violent,but studies and even myself say otherwise. Video-Games have become a major part of kids and young adults lives. It has enhanced their social skills,teamwork and strategizing abilities, along with improved brain speed, and multitasking skills. My goal in this paper is to inform you that video gamers arent destroying their bodies or throwing away their lives, instead theyre setting themselves up for success. To achieve this goal, I organized my paper into main sections, the different types of benefits such as cured diseases in sick kids who play or played the video games , improved motor skills with the help of action games , fitness amelioration caused by playing games with physical activity, and even advanced behavior by being a villian in a ga me. For example, a 2013 study focused their investigation on the effect that playing action games such as Rayman Raving Rabbids , have the possibility to aid children with dyslexia between the ages of seven through thirteen. It not only aids kids with dyslexia but anyone who has suffered from cerebral palsy , addiction of substance abuse , successful treatment of ambhyopia and also stroke victims. Reduced impulsiveness action games improved performance in a test of the ability to refrain from responding to non-target stimuli. Playing video games could easily become a substitute for going to a doctors appointment and receiving medical treatment. Another debatable subject matter is that video games switch childrens and teens behavior in a negative way such as becoming more aggressive or hostile. Researchers have suggested that doing horrible things in game may actually make you a more sustainable person. In the study, gamers who violated their self moral code underwent genuine guilt , so they behaved better in real life to cope with their guilt . Most kids and teens can arrive home after a bad day at school , start playing video games and their whole mood switches. Video games have evolved into stress relievers for most people who are stressed from school, work, etc. More research has been done to prove that there is evidence to show that they make people smarter or at least more cognitively flexible, which is a huge aspect of intellect. The results suggest that the distributed brain networks assisting cognitive flexibility can be activated by engrossing video game experience that stresses maintenance and swift manipulation of multiple information sources. Most participants in these researches saw higher results in their short term memory exams and also extended motor skills such as quick visual clue, improved eye-hand coordination and precise muscle movement which are both essential for practice. Further research is being investigated to show increase in video gamers attention spans which sounds like an amazing hypothesis. The specific area of the brain that is being affected by playing video games is something that is a mystery to most and should be ubiquitous throughout all teens and parents. Researchers looked at twenty-fort volunteers who participated and played the video game for thirty minutes daily for two months while under an MRI machine which examines the brain functions and brain activity and they discovered that they had increased they grey matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum. This is important because advancing the right hippocampus advances the role in how we process our thoughts and consolidate our information, the additional grey matter in the cerebellum improves our muscular activity and functionality and the right prefrontal cortex is where ones personality is originated. We all wish losing weight and being in shape wasnt so strenuous and it was fun, but we just havent been searchi ng in the right place. Video games have become so advanced in our generation that there is video games out there designed to help with fitness and weightloss. For example, the WII FIT is a video game where it scans and records your actions and it escorts you through training such as yoga .It has had a enormous resurgence in the last year and the players are loving the results and the process of playing a video and working out at the at the same time. Playing these excer games help with the circulation of the blood, joint flexibility especially in the knees and hip joints, coordination and balance. Thanks to technology, majority of these games keep track of your progression and helps you set a goal to keep you motivated and determined to become successful. If you were to ask a parent with a child who is a gamer, more than likely theyll admit to them being anti-social. Although people tend to think playing video games makes you anti-social numerous studies have shown that playing vide o games actually makes people more soical. Socializing does not mean going out all the time , it means being able to communicate with other people and being able to hold a conversation. Playing video games allows us to cooperate and communicate, for example, in most action games intell is very important aspect of performance and achievement. Players will let their teammates know locations of enemies, objective information , or even just have laughs by telling jokes. Socializing through video games will assist your real life social skills which will be helpful during a job, interview and etc. Many video games are themed off of real historic events, such as assassins creed, 300, grand theft auto, and super battle tank. Starting with assassins creed, this games setting is back where templar knights were common. It teaches us how they were dominant during that era and how they came to be about. Grand theft auto is heavily influenced by the los angeles gang violence in the past 50 years. It gives us a insight into the life a gang member and a millionaire during gang violence. This game is teaching us that gang related activities are very real and serious and i think it will let children see the true life of gangs and it will inform them to stay away and to not be associated with them. The video games 300 is about a leader of gladiators and how they used to battle for hours at a time, strategies during battle and how life was with kings and queens ruling the land while trying to be overthrown. Last but not least, the action game super battle tank gave us information of the aspects of war. In the game you drove a tank destroying other tanks, but it showed us the artillery during WW1. It also taught that during the war there was a stalemate and they hid in trenches on the other sides of no man land. These video games are a very reliable source of historic information and they should be ubiquitous with school teaching. A big indirect benefit you wouldnt expect is that video games enforce dedication. Many video gamers spend hours at a time sometimes even days playing just to become the greatest. This is important because it shows that they can have dedication and the willpower to achieve their goal. With this ability they will become very motivated for their school work, profession, or any task that needs to be completed. Video games give teens and kids the ability to overcome any obstacle and surpass their goals no matter what. In conclusion, video games are very important to our culture and lives. The next time youre sitting comfortably on your couch playing video games just know you arent hurting your body or rotting your brain, youre setting yourself up for success by advancing your motor skills, youre becoming more intelligence, more fit and healthy, increasing your brain activity and functionality,becoming more motivated and determined, and youre even learning about history more than youll ever learn in school just by playing video games. If youre ever being told that videogames are unhealthy or a waste of time you now know that theyre wrong and why they should sit down and pick up a controller too. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Advantages of Playing Video Games" essay for you Create order