Anticipating the Future through Texts: Visions – Flashcards

Read this excerpt from "Why No Policeman on the Block?" Already, young computer nerds who have attempted to fill this curious vacuum by writing simple directories for the Internet have amassed fabulous fortunes overnight when their companies went public. Netscape's co-founder Jim Clark's fortune ballooned to an astonishing half billion dollars the day the company went public. (Clark reached billionaire status only eighteen months after starting his company; it took Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, twelve years.) Which is the most accurate summary of Kaku's argument?

How does Michio Kaku illustrate the need for organization of the Internet in "Why No Policeman on the Block?"

What is meant by the term "Magic Mirror" as it is used in "The Intelligent Planet"?

How does Michio Kaku establish the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an "Age of Discovery" in "Choreographers of Matter, Life, and Intelligence"?

Read this excerpt from "The Intelligent Planet." From now to 2020, computer scientists expect to see an entire world blossoming over the Internet: electronic commerce and banking, cyber malls, virtual universities and schools, cyber libraries, and so on. We will begin to have a glimpse of Hawthorne's vision when "intelligent agents" became part of this global network, capable of answering our inquiries in plain, conversational language. But the true fruition of Hawthorne's vision may not come until the period from 2020 to 2050, when true artificial intelligent (AI) programs will finally be added to the Net, capable of reason, common sense, and speech recognition. Select the most accurate summary of Kaku's argument.

Read this excerpt from "Choreographers of Matter, Life, and Intelligence." Clearly, we are on the threshold of yet another revolution. Human knowledge is doubling every ten years. What is the meaning of the underlined term?

Read this excerpt from "DNA Testing." DNA samples from insects preserved in amber can date back to before the time of the dinosaurs, which died out 65 million years ago. George Poinar of Oregon State University, for example, has even extracted muscle tissue from a 125-million-year-old Lebanese weevil. This is, says Poinar, "the best preserved protein on the face of the earth." So far, DNA has been successfully extracted from about a half dozen ancient samples in amber. Select the most accurate summary of Kaku's argument.

How does Michio Kaku develop the idea of how the Internet will evolve in "The Intelligent Planet"?

Read this excerpt from "Why No Policeman on the Block?" Any neophyte surfing the Net for the first time will be frustrated by the fact that it has no intelligence whatsoever; like a newborn baby, it is a blank slate. Worse, there are no rules or traffic cops, no regulations or even directory of the Internet. What is the author's purpose for including this statement?

How does Michio Kaku develop the idea of Newton's significance in "Choreographers of Matter, Life, and Intelligence"?

Read this excerpt from "The Intelligent Planet." Instead of typing arcane codes and symbols into a web navigator and being flooded with fifty thousand incorrect answers, in the future we will simply talk to our wall screen or tie clasp and access the entire planet's formidable body of knowledge. What is the meaning of the underlined term?

Read this excerpt from "The Intelligent Planet." Hawthorne . . . marveled that this mysterious substance called electricity could transmit signals across thousands of miles and make (inert) machines spring suddenly to life. What is the meaning of the underlined term?

Read this excerpt from "Talking Robots." Sejnowski rejected the usual top-down approach to reproducing human speech. He threw out the fat dictionaries of pronunciation and programs brimming with the rules of phonetics and the tedious list of exceptions to all the previous rules, which had no rhyme or reason. Instead, he replaced all this with a surprisingly simple neural circuit. What is the author's purpose for including this statement?

How does Michio Kaku establish the importance of allowing the public to access scientific research in "Why No Policeman on the Block?"

Read this excerpt from "Why No Policeman on the Block?" Only in the last decade, with the ending of the Cold War, have these technologies finally been fully released to the (public domain). What is the meaning of the underlined term?