David Gelernter

COMPUTER SCIENTIST, TO PRESENT NEW BOOK ON THE
MEANING OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

NYS Writers Institute, Thursday, March 31, 2016
4:15 p.m. Seminar | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
8:00 p.m. Reading | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
David Gelernter, author and professor of computer science at Yale University, will discuss his new book, The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness (2016), an exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day,on Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 8 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center on the UAlbany uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the author will offer an informal seminar in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center. Free and open to the public, the events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, and cosponsored by UAlbany’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

PROFILE
David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Mirror Worlds (1991), The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought (1994), and Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology (1998).

His new book, The Tides of Mind: Uncovering The Spectrum of Consciousness (2016), is an exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day. Gelernter argues that works of literature from authors such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and J.M. Coetzee, can answer many of our most fundamental questions about the origins of creativity and the mysterious wonders of the human mind. Kirkus Reviews called Gelernter’s “mildly quirky view of human consciousness… a personal, reasonable, nonscientific analysis of the mind.” Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Nick Romeo called The Tides of Mind  “fascinating…an astonishingly ambitious book, beautifully written and ultimately persuasive.”

On June 24, 1993, Gelernter was severely injured by a mail bomb sent to him by Ted Kaczynski, also known as the “Unabomber,” and sustained permanent damage to both his right hand and right eye. During his recovery from this attack, Gelernter wrote three books, including a memoir entitled Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber (1997). In The New York Times Book Review, Alan Ehrenhalt described Drawing Life as “witty and entertaining, and filled with provocative questions that no writer this good has forced upon us in a long time.”

The son of the computer scientist Herbert Gerlernter, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence in the 1950s, David Gelernter received a B.A. and an M.A. in classical Hebrew literature from Yale University before earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Stony Brook University in 1982. Throughout the 1980s, Gelernter was a pioneer in the field of parallel computing, in which complex tasks are divided up and multiple computers work simultaneously to accomplish individual mini-tasks and combine the finished pieces. Along with Nicholas Carriero, Gelernter developed the computer programming system known as “Linda,” which has been implemented into programming languages from C to Fortran to Java.

In addition to his work as a professor of computer science, an artist, and a writer, Gelernter is a prominent conservative columnist and a frequent contributor to publications such as The Weekly Standard and Commentary.

For additional information, visit New York State Writers Institute on Facebook, online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst, or email [email protected], or call 518-442-5620.