From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!141.201.2.63!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!newsrouter.chello.at!news01.chello.no!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia References: <3213041760976232@naggum.net> <9rjts1$jf9$1@news3.cadvision.com> <9rk8v9$nkp$1@news3.cadvision.com> <86wv1d6cg5.fsf@coulee.tdb.com> <3213570717605377@naggum.net> <86pu72eu7c.fsf@gondolin.local.net> <3213910032404080@naggum.net> <3213912667651033@naggum.net> <3213990934511212@naggum.net> Mail-Copies-To: never From: Erik Naggum Message-ID: <3214045436594822@naggum.net> Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 32 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 14:23:40 GMT X-Complaints-To: abuse@chello.no X-Trace: news01.chello.no 1005056620 212.186.234.171 (Tue, 06 Nov 2001 15:23:40 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 15:23:40 MET Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:19261 * Erann Gat | The difference is this: it is possible to take the information content of | a book and render it in a computer in a way that does not lose the book's | essential value. This begs the question of why a computer is so special. What, exactly, makes electricity non-real? What kind of magic wand does a computer possess that makes that which is stored within it _materially_ different from any other reality? The fact that we can no longer _see_ it is no different from a lot of other very real things that we cannot see. And who _values_ things? How come a particular aspect of a book is designated an "essential value" just because a computer can retain it? If I model a car down to its smallest details in some form that is not usable as a car, but from which a working car may again be built, it is completely irrelevant to the owners of the car design that I had a non-usable intermediate model. The same goes for books, actually, and whether the intermediate, non-book model can be _read_ through _yet_ another duplication process is also irrelevant. We can already give industrial robots computerized drawings of a lot of things and they will happily reproduce them faithfully. The _amount_ of work that goes into the duplication process is completely immaterial. The fact that _some_ work is required is the essential issue. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.