6-15-96. NYP, Book review: AFTER THOUGHT The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence By James Bailey Illustrated. 277 pages Basic Books/HarperCollins. $25. ISBN 0-465-00781-3 Mr. Bailey, a former senior manager at the Thinking Machines Corporation, foresees an "electronic computing revolution" whose "intellectual impact will be greater than anything since the Renaissance, possibly greater than anything since the invention of language." In his view, the greatest challenge posed by the computer revolution will be for humans to trust processes of thinking they won't necessarily understand, such as neural networks spotting patterns without supplying proof "in any human-absorbable form." His main point is that we must become aware of the outmoded abstractions on which our sequential thinking is based and to jettison them in favor of parallel processes. He cites Alfred North Whitehead: "A civilization which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a very limited burst of progress." The wonder of Mr. Bailey's book is that he makes us aware of things abstract that all our lives we have been trained to think of as concrete. ----- http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/wonder.txt (7 kb) WON_der