Introduction: The Substitution of Human Faculties with Technology: Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Research in artificial intelligence, starting in the 1960s, yet formulated a new goal: the automation of thought processes with intelligent machines. Although first attempts to develop "thinking" machines had only little success as the aimed at solving very general problems, the invention of expert systems marked a breakthrough. Albeit the application of those semi-intelligent systems is (still) restricted to quite narrow domains of performance, such as taxation and medical image interpretation, they are able to mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. While the development of intelligent machines, which are able to reason, to generalize and to learn from past experience is not likely to become reality in the very near future, research in artificial intelligence progresses quickly and sooner or later the substitution of men's unique faculties will come true.

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1500 - 1700 A.D. 1588 Agostino Ramelli's reading wheel Agostino Ramelli designed a "reading wheel", which allowed browsing through a large number of documents without moving from one spot to another. The device presented a large number of books - a small library - laid open on lecterns on a kind of ferry-wheel. It allowed skipping chapters and browsing through pages by turning the wheel to bring lectern after lectern before the eyes. Ramelli's reading wheel thus linked ideas and texts and reminds of today's browsing software used to navigate the World Wide Web. 1597 The first newspaper is printed in Europe.

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CNN CNN is a U.S.-TV-enterprise, probably the world's most famous one. Its name has become the symbol for the mass-media, but also the symbol of a power that can decide which news are important for the world and which are not worth talking about. Every message that is published on CNN goes around the world. The Gulf War has been the best example for this until now, when a CNN-reporter was the one person to do the countdown to a war. The moments when he stood on the roof of a hotel in Baghdad and green flashes surrounded him, went around the world.

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Gateway A gateway is a computer supplying point-to-multipoint connections between computer networks.

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Assembly line An assembly line is an industrial arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers for continuous flow of workpieces in mass production operations. An assembly line is designed by determining the sequences of operations for manufacture of each product component as well as the final product. Each movement of material is made as simple and short as possible with no cross flow or backtracking. Work assignments, numbers of machines, and production rates are programmed so that all operations performed along the line are compatible.

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