Computer Knowledge - Representation

666 Words3 Pages
How does the representation of knowledge in computers (documents, photos, music, files etc.) differ from the representation of knowledge in humans? How are they similar? Based on the text representation is a” physical state that was created to convey information, specifying an object, event, or category or its characteristics or relations”. Knowledge is in the “inclusive sense used in cognitive psychology, information in memory about the world, ranging from the everyday to the formal; often further defined as information about the world that is likely to be true and that one has justification for believing”. Computers are not as capable at forming internal representations of the world. Instead of gathering knowledge for themselves, computers depend on human beings to place knowledge directly into their memories. Computer memory and human memory work differently and there are similarities that help us to understand the way computers work. The brain and the computer brain use different kinds of memory for different tasks. Long-term memory is the main function of the human brain. Long-term memory stores information for years and makes it available the moment that it is needed. Computers use a form of long-term memory, which is a hard disk. The hard disk works sort of like a record: the record (platter) spins on a “spindle” and the arm moves to different sections on the record to read or write to it. By changing the polarity of sections of the record information, stored in binary form. Looking past the mechanical differences, long-term memory serves a similar purpose in computers and humans. Computer hard drives are slow in reading and writing, not unlike human memories, for human memory takes longer to access older memory, computer memory (hard drives) can store unlimited amounts of information for years. Human memories are more changeable than hard drive data,
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