Galatea 2.2, English edition [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Cognitive neurologist and well-known writer team up to produce a machine that can pass a comprehensive exam in English literature, with predictably unpredictable results. Like The Gold Bug Variations, this is another of Powers' wild, unforgettable novels encompassing science, philosophy, and the frailty of mankind.

Powers' fifth novel is a dazzling work of autobiography overlaid with a reinterpretation of the Pygmalian myth. Powers describes his fictional namesake's experiences as humanist-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences, where he uses his literary expertise to help Dr. Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist, win a bet that he can create a thinking machine capable of passing a comprehensive master's exam in English. As the computer, Helen, learns the fundamentals of language and literature, she develops a sense of her own identity and self-worth. Paralleling Powers' growing attachment to Helen is a reassessment of the years he spent living in Holland writing his novels and the demise of his longtime relationship with a former student. This is a difficult, thought-provoking, and exhilarating read, electric with the power of language and, paradoxically, language's ultimate inability to alleviate suffering. Nancy Pearl -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of "Galatea 2.2--Richard Powers--returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for exisiting.<BR> -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

Richard Powers, 1957 geboren, zählt zu den ganz großen amerikanischen Erzählern der Gegenwart. Seine Bücher wurden vielfach ausgezeichnet, seine Beiträge erschienen in der New York Times, Esquire, Times und Harper's.