From: EP.LLD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Lara)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Phosphor dots, eh?
Date: 11 Nov 1992 17:27:51 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

In article <92316.161245MAH76X@rohvm1.rohmhaas.com>,
<MAH76X@rohvm1.rohmhaas.com> writes:
>In article <BxKIs5.1rL@well.sf.ca.us>, tnf@well.sf.ca.us (David Gans) says:
>>This is where you and I diverge.  The value of this net is in the connections
>>made by real people.  I've seen a lot of damage done by people who pretend
>>it's nothing but ones and zeroes.
>
>Maybe Joe Hack is taking his turn teaching us something David.  Maybe he's
>teaching us all to think.  Maybe we, as a group, need it.  Thanks Joe!
>
>
>Joe Doheny

and in today's _campus report_ the following excerpts from an
article entitled 'tv, computers, blur the line between natural and
artificial'

'new television and computer technology increasingly is blurring
humans' ability to distinguish between natural and artificial
experience ... '

'in computers, better voice output, better screen displays and more
moving pictures, Nass said, will increasingly fool users into
treating the computer as if it were human.'

'if computer programmers simply switch from text to voice
communication without changing what the programs say, they are
likely to alienate many of their users, ... because people react to
voice output as if [it] were a specific human talking to them.

'for decades, people have speculated about whether a computer can be
made smart enough to fool humans into thinking they are interacting
with another human.'
     '"this is the wrong question," ... "we should be asking, how
pathetic can the macine be and still fool a human?"'

'people rarely say they think a computer is human, but when nass
designs experiments to elicit their reactions to computers, they
often use rules derived from human - rather than machine -
interaction.  voice output is one of the characteristics that
triggers such a mistake, nass said, because "humans have enormous,
primitive capabilities for discriminating human-sounding voices..."'

'those who doubt that they treat computers and tv as reality may
wish to test how they think they would react to the following
experiments and compare that to the responses Reeves and Nass found
in their laboratories.'

"Q: you are invited to be tutored by a computer with a
black-and-white display screen and a CD-quality voice. a second
computer voice will evaluate the tutor's performance in one case,
the same voice in another. will that make any difference?"

"Q: you are asked to watch news and entertainment shows on two
television sets.  the sets are identical but the researchers tell
you they normally use one to show entertainment shows and one to
show news.  will your evaluation of the shows be affected by the set
upon which you watched them?"

yep, this is what some people at stanford sit around all day talking
about, apparently.  it seemed germaine given the context of this
discussion:

for the record, my impression is, the things you SEE on the screen
are phosphor dots.  the things that PUT them there are people.  but
just where does reality come in???

ODC: my monitor's not dead :)

peace
lara
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