Will we all be replaced by machines?

Who will we be?: JAMA surgery !

T HE ARCHIVES OF SURGERY WILL BE OFFIcially renamed JAMA Surgery, beginning January 1, 2013; the other 8 Archives journals will be renamed similarly for their specialties. When I discussed this with the new JAMA editor, Howard Bauchner, MD, I was excited about the new name. We are uniquely linked to JAMA and this name change will broadcast that association even more vividly. The Archives of Sur...

Should we all be vegetarians?

This number will be updated

Tomorrow's library: will it all be infrastructure?

The form in which knowledge is described and encapsulated has a major impact on the design of libraries and the functions performed within the library. Libraries as we known them have been primarily built to store and disseminate knowledge in book format. New technology and the changing needs of knowledge workers, which form important parts of the logocentric, practicentric, and democentric ele...

Thinking Machines: Can There Be? Are We?

Artificial intelligence researchers predict that _thinking machines_ will take over our mental work, just as their mechanical predecessors were intended to eliminate physical drudgery. Critics have argued with equal fervor that _thinking machine_ is a contradiction in terms. Computers, with their foundations of cold logic, can never be creative or insightful or possess real judgment. Although m...