Working with a Black Box Problem and Star Trek

The job of computer scientists, of course, is to design the programs that let electronic computers accomplish those impressive feats of thinking and knowing. The computer scientists have to figure out how to make programs that get to the right kind of output from the right kind of input. But our job as cognitive psychologists is rather different and even harder. We are more like archaeologists than engineers.

Actually, it's a familiar Star Trek story. We have landed on a planet that already contains amazing biological computational devices. They were designed eons ago over millions of years by a force far more powerful than any we possess. The one thing we know about them for sure is that they employ incredibly advanced technology. There are no operating manuals, no wiring diagrams, no Homo Sapiens for Dummies. We can't even hope that sometime in the last few minutes of the show the all-powerful designing intelligence will take over one of our crew and explain its intentions in a suitably resonant and spooky voice (the usual Star Trek resource in these situations). We're on our own.

Notes:

When we are exploring a black box, we are like the archaeologists in Star Trek.

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The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Gopnik , Meltzoff , Kuhl (2001-01-01), The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind, Harper Paperbacks, Retrieved on 2011-07-06

Folksonomies: education parenting pregnancy babies children infancy