20 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Star Trek is About Diversity
Moses Maimonides, who lived nearly 900 years ago, wrote a book called The Guide for the Perplexed. In it, he said: "The human race contains such a variety of individuals that we cannot discover two persons exactly alike in any moral quality or external appearance. This great variety and necessity of social life are essential elements in man's nature." These are the same principles, the same philosophies, which are inherent in "Star Trek." But let's go back to what "Star Trek" really is. It...Rodenberry's philosophy was to respect and cherish diversity.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
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...When we are exploring a black box, we are like the archaeologists in Star Trek.