CMN 148 EXAM 2 QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS GRADED A+ 2025/2026
Social Development (Morris) - ANS A group's ability to master its physical and intellectual
environment to get things done over time
The Steam Revolution (Morris) - ANS - The industrial revolution marks the biggest/fastest
transformation in human history
- Allowed us to overcome the limitations of muscle power, human and animal, and generate
massive amounts of useful energy at will
The Second Machine Age - ANS Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental
power (the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environment)
- What the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.
The 3 "broad conclusions" the author made - ANS - We're living in a time of astonishing
progress with digital technologies - Ones that have computer hardware, software, and networks
at their core (not brand new, but have refined our digital engines)
- The transformation brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones -
Increases variety and volume of our consumption
- Digitalization is going to bring it with some thorny challenges (economic rather than
environmental disruption and replacement of workers with computers)
There's never been a better time to be one kind of worker, and a worse time to be another -
ANS There's never been a worse time to be a worker with only ordinary skills and abilities to
offer because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and
abilities at an extraordinary rate
1 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
,What computers are good/bad at - ANS Computers are good at following rules:
- Information processing tasks
- Algorithms are simplifications; they can't and don't take everything into account include the
most common and important things
- Predicting payback rates
Computers are bad at pattern recognition:
- Information processing tasks that can't be boiled down to rules or algorithms (no human
capacity for pattern recognition)
DARPA and story about the car - ANS - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- DARPA Grand Challenge for driverless cars:
Built a completely autonomous vehicle that could complete a 150-mile course through
California's Mojave Desert
- No car really made it that far: The winning car made it about 7.4 miles before veering off the
course
Human advantages besides pattern recognition - ANS - Complex communication will stay a
human part of the division of labor
- The possibility of exchanging information with a computer rather than another human is a long
way off
Siri's troubles - ANS - If it didn't understand what was said, it would ask for repeated
clarifications and gave strange or inaccurate answers
- ex: Where is Elvis buried? Could not answer because it thought the name was "Elvis Buried"
Tom Mitchell's claims (Carnegie Mellon) - ANS "We're at the beginning of a ten-year period
where we're going to transition from computers that can't understand language to a point
where computers can understand quite a bit about language"
2 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
, Computers' communication abilities compared to humans - ANS - Natural language
processing software is still far from perfect, and computers are not yet as good as people at
complex communication
- Computers' communication abilities are not as deep as humans', but are broader
Jeopardy example on complex communication and patterns - ANS Computers are now
combining pattern matching with complex communication to quite literally beat people at their
own game
Moravec's paradox - ANS - The discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers
that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning require very little computation,
but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources
- Sensorimotor skills: Skills that involve sensing the physical world and controlling the body to
move through it
Kiva and Boston Dynamics - ANS Kiva (Boston startup company): Taught its automatons to
move around warehouses safely, quickly, and effectively, staying out of the way of humans and
one another
- Software tracks where all the products, shelves, robots, and people are in the warehouse, and
orchestrates the continuous dance of the Kiva automatons
Boston Dynamics (New England startup): Builds robots aimed at supporting American troops in
the field by, among other things, carrying heavy loads over rough terrain
- "BigDog" can go up steep hills, recover from slips on ice, and do other very dog-like things
- "Double" rolls over cubicle carpets and hospital hallways carrying an iPad, being the eyes/ears
of the operatorIn
An inflection point - ANS - A bend in the curve where many technologies that used to be
found only in science fiction are becoming everyday reality
3 key characteristics of the second machine age - ANS Exponential, digital, and combinatorial
Moore's Law - ANS - The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of
roughly a factor of two per year
3 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
ANSWERS GRADED A+ 2025/2026
Social Development (Morris) - ANS A group's ability to master its physical and intellectual
environment to get things done over time
The Steam Revolution (Morris) - ANS - The industrial revolution marks the biggest/fastest
transformation in human history
- Allowed us to overcome the limitations of muscle power, human and animal, and generate
massive amounts of useful energy at will
The Second Machine Age - ANS Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental
power (the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environment)
- What the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.
The 3 "broad conclusions" the author made - ANS - We're living in a time of astonishing
progress with digital technologies - Ones that have computer hardware, software, and networks
at their core (not brand new, but have refined our digital engines)
- The transformation brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones -
Increases variety and volume of our consumption
- Digitalization is going to bring it with some thorny challenges (economic rather than
environmental disruption and replacement of workers with computers)
There's never been a better time to be one kind of worker, and a worse time to be another -
ANS There's never been a worse time to be a worker with only ordinary skills and abilities to
offer because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and
abilities at an extraordinary rate
1 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
,What computers are good/bad at - ANS Computers are good at following rules:
- Information processing tasks
- Algorithms are simplifications; they can't and don't take everything into account include the
most common and important things
- Predicting payback rates
Computers are bad at pattern recognition:
- Information processing tasks that can't be boiled down to rules or algorithms (no human
capacity for pattern recognition)
DARPA and story about the car - ANS - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- DARPA Grand Challenge for driverless cars:
Built a completely autonomous vehicle that could complete a 150-mile course through
California's Mojave Desert
- No car really made it that far: The winning car made it about 7.4 miles before veering off the
course
Human advantages besides pattern recognition - ANS - Complex communication will stay a
human part of the division of labor
- The possibility of exchanging information with a computer rather than another human is a long
way off
Siri's troubles - ANS - If it didn't understand what was said, it would ask for repeated
clarifications and gave strange or inaccurate answers
- ex: Where is Elvis buried? Could not answer because it thought the name was "Elvis Buried"
Tom Mitchell's claims (Carnegie Mellon) - ANS "We're at the beginning of a ten-year period
where we're going to transition from computers that can't understand language to a point
where computers can understand quite a bit about language"
2 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
, Computers' communication abilities compared to humans - ANS - Natural language
processing software is still far from perfect, and computers are not yet as good as people at
complex communication
- Computers' communication abilities are not as deep as humans', but are broader
Jeopardy example on complex communication and patterns - ANS Computers are now
combining pattern matching with complex communication to quite literally beat people at their
own game
Moravec's paradox - ANS - The discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers
that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning require very little computation,
but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources
- Sensorimotor skills: Skills that involve sensing the physical world and controlling the body to
move through it
Kiva and Boston Dynamics - ANS Kiva (Boston startup company): Taught its automatons to
move around warehouses safely, quickly, and effectively, staying out of the way of humans and
one another
- Software tracks where all the products, shelves, robots, and people are in the warehouse, and
orchestrates the continuous dance of the Kiva automatons
Boston Dynamics (New England startup): Builds robots aimed at supporting American troops in
the field by, among other things, carrying heavy loads over rough terrain
- "BigDog" can go up steep hills, recover from slips on ice, and do other very dog-like things
- "Double" rolls over cubicle carpets and hospital hallways carrying an iPad, being the eyes/ears
of the operatorIn
An inflection point - ANS - A bend in the curve where many technologies that used to be
found only in science fiction are becoming everyday reality
3 key characteristics of the second machine age - ANS Exponential, digital, and combinatorial
Moore's Law - ANS - The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of
roughly a factor of two per year
3 @COPYRIGHT 2025/2026 ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.
