AUGUST 2011 - AudioFile
Christian examines what it means to be human, focusing on something called the Turing Test, to which he happily subjects himself. The book encompasses a lot of material—from philosophy to aspects of human nature and beyond. Ultimately, the subject matter is scattered across too large a field and uses too many tangential examples. As a narrator, Christian is functional. He plays it straight, covering topics that run from chess to hockey, and from the syntax of language to the process of file compression. This book, however, should be reserved for deep thinkers only. M.B. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
In a fast-paced, witty, and thoroughly winning style, Christian documents his experience in the 2009 Turing Test, a competition in which judges engage in five-minute instant-message conversations with unidentified partners, and must then decide whether each interlocutor was a human or a machine. The program receiving the most "human" votes is dubbed the "most human computer," while the person receiving the most votes earns the title of "most human human." Poet and science writer Christian sets out to win the latter title and through his quest, investigates the nature of human interactions, the meaning of language, and the essence of what sets us apart from machines that can process information far faster than we can. Ranging from philosophy through the construction of pickup lines to poetry, Christian examines what it means to be human and how we interact with one another, and with computers as equals—via automated telephone menus and within the medical establishment, for example. This fabulous book demonstrates that we are capable of experiencing and sharing far deeper thoughts than even the best computers—and that too often we fail to achieve the highest level of humanness. (Mar.)
Library Journal
The Turing Test: a bunch of judges ask questions of undisclosed contestants, trying to figure out which are human and which is a computer. There's a prize for the Most Human Computer—and the Most Human Human. When Christian became a contestant in 2009, he was determined to prove himself more human than any computer (in the previous year, the computers were acting very human indeed). Here he talks about the contest and the pressing issues it raises. Since Christian has degrees in both philosophy and computer science and an MFA in poetry, he should do this justice. I'm intrigued—and, really, who cannot love a philosophy-trained author who writes poetry? Not just for geeks.
AUGUST 2011 - AudioFile
Christian examines what it means to be human, focusing on something called the Turing Test, to which he happily subjects himself. The book encompasses a lot of material—from philosophy to aspects of human nature and beyond. Ultimately, the subject matter is scattered across too large a field and uses too many tangential examples. As a narrator, Christian is functional. He plays it straight, covering topics that run from chess to hockey, and from the syntax of language to the process of file compression. This book, however, should be reserved for deep thinkers only. M.B. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
