Photo of Prof Derek Partridge

Prof Derek Partridge

Recent Books

Two recent new books summarize my current research interest:

1. The Seductive Computer: why IT systems always fail published by Springer in 2011

This book explains why the discrete complexity of IT is so difficult to manage and control when used to build large software systems. It concludes by listing the 12 weaknesses of this amazingly productive technology.

2. What Makes You Clever: the puzzle of intelligence published by World Scientific in 2014

This books explains why artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and brain-scan sciences have made so little headway since Turing in 1950 proposed his famous test. Yet we regularly get announcements of computers becoming intelligent very soon. Why has modern science made so little progress with this particular problem? And why are we so constantly asked to believe that the problem is all but solved?