Intelligent Enterprise

In Praise of Mind

I would like to take just a moment to say how valuable I found Barry Grushkin’s “Connect the Dots” (Intelligent Enterprise, March 1, 2000). Furthermore, I’m afraid I’m becoming a bit of a fan because this is far from the first of Grushkin’s pieces that have struck me as being focused on especially challenging, well-chosen subjects, reflecting uncommon insight by virtue of selection as well as by comments he makes in the articles. I am especially grateful for the bibliographic references Grushkin provides; they are each now on my reading list. As somewhat a return of favor, let me also draw your attention to Antonio Damasio’s recent book, The Feeling of What Happens (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999). His thesis is also that emotion is not only very far from ancillary to reason, and that reason is very nearly impossible without emotion. As one of the most prestigious neurologists in the world, Damasio writes with very considerable corroboration, as well as taste and grace.

Mark Reiners
Los Angeles

Barry Grushkin responds:

I would like to respond to some points Reiners emailed me directly. He said:

“Many computer analogies to the brain wildly underestimate the complexities and sophistication of neural processes. These are sublimely beautiful perhaps beyond our comprehension.”

I think there is a certain tendency among some who are mathematically or analytically trained to expect some grand unifying theorem or method to explain neural processes.

Rather, scientists seem to be finding at every turn that many differing kinds of mathematical models will be required. Single neurons seem to be able to fire in a spectrum of differing types of signals, and neurons are arranged in all sorts of specialized arrays to solve all sorts of unique problems.

As Professor Mark Kon of both the mathematics and neural science departments at Boston University pointed out to me, the human brain could very well turn out to be beyond human comprehension, requiring the comprehension of nothing larger than itself in order to come into being. Rather, the process of millennia of incremental improvements could have produced something with an incomprehensible order of complexity.

Personally, on looking at the complexity of the visual system required to just recognize squares, I am blown away at even the thought of what a system that could recognize faces might look like.

Note to Readers: Highlights from our Community forum submissions appear in a brand-new Correspondence feature below.

Community Forum Feedback

A notable exchange in the IntelligentEAI Forum occurred between Mike Gilpin, author of “I, Integrator” (IntelligentEAI, February 9, 2000) and Roland de la Taille, who wrote: “Why that understatement that the two poles of integration, application servers and integration servers, should merge and that suppliers of one kind must overcome those of the other kind? It seems that there [are] two different sets of technologies addressing two different parts of [the] same process: one for user interaction and the other for data propagation.”

“There are obviously connections between the two [technologies] and some overlap as they should share some common techniques, [such as]: adapters, process automation, and platform performance. [However], their core technologies [focus on] tight coupling for application servers (transaction type) and loose coupling for integration server (event type). [The] adapters [used] may not be the same kind [either]; [adapters may be] transaction-oriented for application servers and event-oriented for integration servers. Even the process automation [used] may not be the same: for instance, workflow orientation [might be used] for app servers (separation of data flow and tasks flow) and flow automation [might be used] for integration servers (joint data and events flows).”

Check out Gilpin’s response and add your own opinions at the IntelligentEAI Forum at www.IntelligentEAI.com.

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