Accidental Vagrant

Of two approaches to design—1) reacting to the urgent and 2) responding to the important—this is about the second: Please stop anthropomorphizing plumbing systems! Frankly, you’re scaring the kids! We need to talk. Computer systems are plumbing systems for electrons and photons, similar in behavior as plumbing systems are for water and waste. During my training to become a guided missile technician in the Navy I was told to use my understanding of plumbing systems to understand the more complex electronic systems I would be working with. It worked. Both systems were logical following the laws of physics. I was soon trouble shooting, fixing and maintaining complex electronic systems that at first had appeared to be incomprehensible. ‘Artificial intelligence’ systems, like plumbing systems, have proven to be immensely useful in the lives of human beings. Despite the ever-growing hype around artificial intelligence systems—AI—these systems are not sentient. They are actuall...

Without knowing exactly what ‘intelligence’ is, the term is used liberally nowadays especially in relationship to ‘computer intelligence’ aka ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI). It seems fair then to initiate a discussion concerning ‘design intelligence’ (DI) in this context. Design intelligence is a form of ‘human intelligence’ (HI). DI is not as studied and discussed as AI, which is a concern. Design intelligence is what makes us human. Other forms of intelligence may be shared by animals or machines but DI is our distinguishing competency. The world is flooded with news concerning ‘artificial intelligence rivaled only by news about big data. The push for big data is pretty clearly economic while it is not as clearly the same for AI, although there are obviously mercantile interests present. There are warnings about the  dangers of AI  to human welfare    and  t here are questions about the  challenges of being human  in the presence of ubiquitous A...