Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century

In the mid-1950s, researchers in the United States melded formal theories of problem solving and intelligence with another powerful new tool for control: the electronic digital computer. Several branches of western mathematical science emerged from this nexus, including computer science (1960s–), data science (1990s–) and artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis offers an account of the origins and politics of AI in the mid-twentieth century United States, which focuses on its imbrications in systems of societal control. In an effort to denaturalize the power relations upon which the field came into being, I situate AI’s canonical origin story in relation to the structural and intellectual priorities of the U.S. military and American industry during the Cold War, circa 1952 to 1961. This thesis offers a detailed and comparative account of the early careers, research interests, and key outputs of four researchers often credited with laying the foundations for AI and machine learning—Herbert A. Simon, Frank Rosenblatt, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. It chronicles the distinct ways in which each sought to formalise and simulate human mental behaviour using digital electronic computers. Rather than assess their contributions as discontinuous with what came before, as in mythologies of AI's genesis, I establish continuities with, and borrowings from, management science and operations research (Simon), Hayekian economics and instrumentalist statistics (Rosenblatt), automatic coding techniques and pedagogy (McCarthy), and cybernetics (Minsky), along with the broadscale mobilization of Cold War-era civilian-led military science generally. I assess how Minsky’s 1961 paper 'Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence' simultaneously consolidated and obscured these entanglements as it set in motion an initial research agenda for AI in the following two decades. I argue that mind-computer metaphors, and research in complex information processing generally, played an important role in normalizing the small- and large-scale structuring of social behaviour using mathematics in the United States from the second half of the twentieth century onward

Minding the Gap: Uncovering the Underground\u27s Role in the Formation of Modern London, 1855-1945

My research examines how the London Underground – the first subway in the world - provided new public spaces and forms of mobility that redefined how Londoners interacted in, moved through, and imaged the city. Perhaps nothing embodies the Underground’s iconic status in London quite as completely as the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” This phrase, which originally referred to the gap between the train and the platform at Embankment station on the Northern line, has since become an enduringly popular symbol of London in the minds of travelers and visitors. The fact that a behavioral command about how to move through Underground space has become synonymous with visiting London suggests the deep connections between spatial behaviors and identity in the modern city. People had to be taught how to “Mind the Gap” – and railway officials were never completely able to control the ways in which people used, traveled through, and imagined these spaces. Illuminating these tensions between railway technicians and ordinary passengers demonstrates how the Underground provided a new type of space in which men and women from different classes and backgrounds could assert claims to freedom of movement within the city. Aside from the gap between station platforms and Underground trains, this cultural history of the Underground also reveals how Londoners negotiated and bridged other important gaps - between rich and poor, men and women, and concepts of what constituted being modern or backwards, progressive or dangerous - as they embraced this public space as a part of their everyday lives. My dissertation interweaves works of art and fiction, literary scholarship, and elements of geography and sociology into a cultural history of London’s transport. Though it was owned and operated by a series of private companies throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Underground offered a relatively affordable means of traversing the capitol for Londoners of all classes and backgrounds, and therefore the spaces of the Underground network (stations, platforms, and train cars) acted as public spaces where new ideas about democratic order in society were challenged and negotiated. My dissertation will bring a new perspective to studies of urban history by using interactions within the Tube to demonstrate how modernity was experienced and given meaning through particular spatial practices. I argue that the Underground helped challenge and redefine urban identities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly for women

The contributions of Thomas Alva Edison to music education

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityWith the invention of the phonograph in 1877, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) ushered in a new era of musical experiences. Among other things, his device provided new learning opportunities for both amateur and professional musicians, in addition to non-musicians. By 1906, Edison recordings were being made for the Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music's distance instruction program, five years before Edison's major competitor, the Victor Talking Machine Company, established its education department under the direction of Frances Elliott Clark (1860-1958). The major difference between the competitors' devices was that the Edison phonograph allowed users to record music and the Victor talking machine did not. Despite this disadvantage, the Victor device was marketed more successfully as an aid to music education. Although Edison's phonograph companies encouraged music education through student performance, self-recording, and correspondence feedback, in 1921 Thomas A. Edison, Inc. hired Charles H. Farnsworth (1859-1947) to, in part, replicate Victor's successful approach to music education: learning to appreciate music through listening to recorded music. While Edison and his phonograph have received considerable attention in some scholarly literature, there has been no significant research on his or his companies' involvement with music education. The purpose of this study was to help fill this gap in the literature. Toward that end, the following research questions were addressed: (1) In what ways did Thomas A. Edison contribute to music education? (2) In what ways did Edison's phonograph companies contribute to music education? (3) How, and to whom, did Edison's phonograph companies market their phonographs and other music education products? and (4) How did Edison's approach to music instruction via the phonograph differ from that of Frances Elliott Clark and the Victor Talking Machine Company? Historical research techniques were used in this study, beginning with an examination of documents at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey, the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Historical Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Music Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. These archives contain primary source material about Edison, Clark, and the Edison and Victor phonograph companies

Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Manchester University. Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain’s last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities. Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally. At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain

Information Processing: The Language and Analytical Tools for Cognitive Psychology in the Information Age

The information age can be dated to the work of Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. Their work on cybernetics and information theory, and many subsequent developments, had a profound influence on reshaping the field of psychology from what it was prior to the 1950s. Contemporaneously, advances also occurred in experimental design and inferential statistical testing stemming from the work of Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson. These interdisciplinary advances from outside of psychology provided the conceptual and methodological tools for what is often called the cognitive revolution but is more accurately described as the information-processing revolution. Cybernetics set the stage with the idea that everything ranging from neurophysiological mechanisms to societal activities can be modeled as structured control systems with feedforward and feedback loops. Information theory offered a way to quantify entropy and information, and promoted theorizing in terms of information flow. Statistical theory provided means for making scientific inferences from the results of controlled experiments and for conceptualizing human decision making. With those three pillars, a cognitive psychology adapted to the information age evolved. The growth of technology in the information age has resulted in human lives being increasingly interweaved with the cyber environment, making cognitive psychology an essential part of interdisciplinary research on such interweaving. Continued engagement in interdisciplinary research at the forefront of technology development provides a chance for psychologists not only to refine their theories but also to play a major role in the advent of a new age of science

An Introduction to the Law of Contract

The eighth edition of An Introduction to the Law of Contract incorporates references to the major court decisions that have been handed down since the last edition. These include the High Court’s decisions in: Andrews v ANZ Group Ltd – and the associated decisions of the Federal Court in Paciocco v ANZ Group Ltd and the Victorian Court of Appeal in Cedar Meats (Aust) Pty Ltd v Five Star Lamb Pty Ltd (penalties); Equuscorp Pty Ltd v Haxton (restitution and illegal contracts); Kalkavas v Crown Melbourne Ltd (special disability); Clark v Macourt (the timing of damages); Electricity Generation Corp v Woodside Energy Ltd (the meaning of terms in commercial contracts); and ALH Group Property Holdings Pty Ltd v Chief Commissioner of State Revenue of the State of New South Wales (novation) Also discussed are a number of important State and Territory court decisions in the areas of frustration, restraint of trade, severing, penalty clauses, restitution and change of position, illegality, exemption clauses, implied terms, economic duress, undue influence, taxation and damages, injunctions, mistake, the postal rule and obligations to act in good faith. Significant statutory changes made since the last edition considered in this edition include: replacement of the Federal Magistrates Act 1999 (Cth) by the Federal Circuit Court of Australia Act 1999 (Cth) – converting the Federal Magistrates Court to the Federal Circuit Court of Australia; changes to the unconscionability provisions in the Australian Consumer Law; new Commercial Arbitration Acts in each of the jurisdictions; and replacement of the Fair Trading Act 1999 (Vic) with the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012 (Vic)

Musikedition im Zeichen neuer Medien. Historische Entwicklung und gegenwärtige Perspektiven musikalischer Gesamtausgaben

Die Keimzelle der Musikwissenschaft als geisteswissenschaftlicher Disziplin liegt in den Bemühungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, die Werke herausragender Komponisten zu konservieren und einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit zu erschließen. In diesem Umfeld erschien im Jahr 1851 der erste Band der Bach-Gesamtausgabe, herausgegeben von der Leipziger Bachgesellschaft. Alle nachfolgenden Musiker-Ausgaben entwickelten sich auf dieser Basis und reizten die Möglichkeiten des Buchmediums in zunehmenden Maße aus. Seit etwa zehn Jahren wird versucht, das Potential digitaler Medien für die Musikphilologie zu erschließen. Ausgehend von der Geschichte musikwissenschaftlicher Ausgaben und einer kritischen Reflektion des bisher Geleisteten, weist dieser Band mögliche neue Perspektiven für zukünftige, dem neuen Medium angemessene Editionsformen auf