(计算机将会给整个世界带来怎样的影响.docVIP

CMUs Simon reflects on how computers will continue to shape the world Monday, October 16, 2000 By Byron Spice, Post-Gazette Science Editor Herbert Simon is the man with the golden thumb. A lifelong student of how people make decisions, Simon, 84, has focused on how people use rules of thumb. These mental shortcuts depend on our ability to recognize patterns and associate them with things we have previously experienced. They are essential, he observes, because people rarely have all the time and knowledge necessary to rationally assess situations. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) Its an idea at the basis of bounded rationality -- the theory that won him the Nobel Prize in economics in 1978. While conventional economists maintained that people make rational choices to obtain the best commodity at the best price, Simon argued that inevitable limits on knowledge and analytical ability force people to choose the first option that satisfices or is good enough for them, whether they are buying a loaf or bread or choosing a spouse. In pursuing these ideas, Simon followed his own rules of thumb. He began as a political scientist, studying how parks department budgets were made in his native Milwaukee, which led him into economics and business administration. At Carnegie Tech in the mid-1950s, he and Allen Newell incorporated a new tool -- the computer -- into the study of decision making. In the process, they invented the first thinking machine and a field that would become known as artificial intelligence. Simons continuing interest in how people think landed him in Carnegie Mellon Universitys psychology department, where he continues his pursuit of cognitive science. ? ? ? Symposium to explore computers potential The potential of computers to make the world a better place or to create problems will be discussed by experts in psychology, artificial intelligence and the arts during a day-long symposium Thursday at Carnegie Mellon