Meaning of “Pattern on the Stone”

We recently finished reading the book “Pattern on the Stone” in my computer science class. Overall, during reading this book, I felt pretty engaged with the book. The topics engaged me and interested me. The most interesting I learned was how the author of the book built a tic-tac-toe machine using physical items such as sticks and strings. This helped me step back and realize that computers work through the same logic that sticks and strings can, and it’s not some sort of magic that happens that I will never understand. I also enjoyed when the book explained error correcting, as this is a vital part in error correcting memory that is used in servers, which I am very interested in, and own one myself. Would I recommend this book to a friend? Yes, I would, but only if that person already has a basic understanding of computers, as some of the topics covered in this book go more in depth and someone who doesn’t know anything about computers may get lost. I think this book was chosen as a textbook for this course because it helps introduce us to some of the basics of how computer work, the cover literally says “the simple ideas that make computers work”. This book helps expose us all to the concept of computer science and what basic concepts we will deal with throughout our studies and our careers. One of the chapters that I enjoyed reading was the chapter that dealt with machine learning and artificial intelligence, mostly because I believe this is one of the next big things in computer science. In the future, and even in some systems today, artificial intelligence and machine learning will play a hand in how our digital lives function. Today it might be as simple as being to recognize a car or face from one of your photos and group those pictures together, but in the future, machine learning and artificial intelligence will be relied upon for our everyday lives. Instead of Siri being just a thing you talk to, it will be a thing to have a conversation with, and it will know you as a person and how to make itself more useful to us, even if it’s just a piece of code sitting on our phones. Artificial intelligence and machine learning is already being tested and implemented in the military today. I recently went to a Landon Lecture where the president, CEO, and chairman of Northrop Grumman, the company behind the B-2 stealth bomber. He discussed how his company was actively using machine learning to teach its new test bomber how to land and take off from air carriers as well as coordinate mid-air refueling. Northrop Grumman has been able to successfully take off and land on an aircraft carrier completely autonomously. This is the type of stuff that we only dreamed about years ago, with movies like terminator, and now this is happening in the real world. “the Pattern on the Stone” was published about 18 years ago in 1998, the year I was born. The fact that the knowledge and the thought in this book is still relevant to this day proves that this book is a good choice of book for a textbook, and a good read for anyone wanting to know more about how computers work at the most basic level. Overall, there was no part of this book that I didn’t like if you don’t count the rare page where I became disinterested, and I would recommend reading the book “Pattern on the Stone” by W. Daniel Hillis.