JINS 319: Human and Computer Cognition

Professor: Dr. Alan Garvey

Section 01: MWF 1:30-2:20pm VH 1400

Office Hours

• MTWF 10:30am-12:30pm

Class Schedule

• The complete class schedule is available online. Note that this schedule is definitely subject to change in the details.

Syllabus

• The syllabus is available online.

Short Writing Assignments

• You will have three of these.

Research Paper

Bibliography

• Annotated bibliography of books that are potentially relevant for your research paper.

Links

• Pertinent comic.
• Steven Pinker gave a talk in Columbia on Saturday, March 19, 2011 as part of the Life Sciences and Society Symposium.
• In the second half of the 18th century, many really clever automata were built:
  • page about Jaquet-Droz automata
  • Vaucanson's famous duck
• In late 2004 O'Reilly published a book called Mind Hacks that I think is really cool. There is also a Mind Hacks website. We will explore some of these ideas in our Hands On classes later in the semester.
• We don't directly focus on the brain as much as we might in this class, but you may choose to do so in your research project. Many great online resources are available:
  • Brain Info
  • The Navigable Atlas of the Human Brain
  • The Whole Brain Atlas
  • Brain Museum has lots of pictures of brains.
• Pinker-related links:
  • Brief interview with Pinker about what the Harvard President said
  • Article from Newsweek about Pinker's ideas
• How to Survive a Robot Uprising

• Links from the Spring 2004 version of this class:
  • Link to a robot page from Todd Ross.
  • Link to a nanotechnology video from Matt.
  • CYCorp web page
  • Game of Life links:
    • Objects that frequently occur
    • a page with lots of information on the Game of Life
  • Braitenberg vehicles links:
    • A sort of useful Java applet simulator
    • written descriptions of a few simple vehicles
    • descriptions of more vehicles, more or less straight from Braitenberg's book
  • StarLogo
  • Genetic Algorithm pages:
    • a nice tutorial with applets
    • another applet page
  • Kurzweil has a whole website devoted to his ideas about the future of humans and computing. The Evolution of Mind in the 21st Century is one interesting article.
  • Humorous Brain in a Vat page. Should I make this the third short paper assignment next time I teach this class?