I am somewhat confused about his Ben Schneiderman’s distinction between a tool and something that is mimicking the form of a human or animal. He says that tools don’t mimic a human or animal but instead enhance them but this just doesn’t fit so perfectly as I am thinking about it. He says a plane is not mimicking a bird, and physically he is right. But looking at it in a more broad sense, a plane is mimicking a bird from the point of view of the flightless human being. So, I think it is reasonable to say that birds were likely part of what sparked the quest for human flight. Based on these musings, I think I would like to probe further about the relationship between something that mimics and bird or animal and something that is considered a tool.
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I am really interested in Ben's question about biomimicry as well and would love to understand how contemporary AI and computer science researchers are leveraging emerging understandings from fields of biology and neuroscience to gain inspiration for new computing structures (and vice versa as big data applies to medicine of course!). Does our biological understanding of the human brain inform how computer scientists go about networking? How do intersections of biology and computer science embodied in projects like the Connectome change how we view the digital and natural worlds alike?
I agree with your questioning—I think “mimicking” is often a helpful mental model to understand what these “tools” do...