Are You Obsessed with Computers or Something?
I have been working towards a PhD in Computer Science for the last several years, focusing mostly on programming languages and compilers although there have been distractions. These two areas of complementary technology influence each other in very deep ways and are the underpinnings of much of the field; languages influence how we think about problems, how we write solutions to problems, and how we architect and engineer software tools and systems. Compilers allow our abstractions to outpace hardware architectures; providing an environment for reasoning. And for 30 years they have been quite solidly the primary means of extracting the requisite computational efficiency necessary to make tasks complete soon enough and make systems reactive enough to serve their respective purposes. These two, Compilers and Programming Languages, can often resemble a microcosm of Computer Science, itself a microcosm of human knowledge, communication, and reasoning.
My exploration of Computer Science, from the breadth reached in an undergraduate education, though never as broad as I would have hoped, to the depth that I have chosen to develop from focusing on these fields, have given me an unique perspective on life. Strangely enough, as impersonal and rigid computers and their underpinnings of discrete mathematics, abstract algebra, and logic are, the field has enormous need for imaginative and creative minds to drive it. It is the ultimate expression of man's reasoning mind; a machine. It is neither emotional nor wayward, it is the perfect pupil, and the complete embodiment of an architect's pure genius. It admits no ambiguity, and where ambiguity has cropped up--in computer architecture, languages, communication protocols, electrical specifications--chaos and wasted effort is the inevitable result. No technology ever created has enjoyed the meteoric rise, the vast penetration, and astonishing rate of advancement that computers have. In many ways it is because a computer is more than a overblown calculator (a term once reserved for humans who carried out arithmetic operations on paper with pencils), and it is more than a blank monolith of nebulous existence that is mysterious or unknowable. It is imminently knowable; it is the ultimate tool, and it is man's finest creation to date.
We must never surrender the creation of the computer and all of the marvel it has unlocked to those whose believe that man is irrational and that progress is an accident. It more than anything yet created is a reification of reason, an instillation of creative genius, and a functioning, real, and entirely logical entity that proves its own existence. It defies anti-reason; it dispels it. It debunks the loose irrationalism of relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction. It was neither discovered nor happened upon nor mined from the earth. It is a creation, an establishment of principles that exists as true in this universe.
But let's not make it too holy. It is, after all, just a tool. And "computer" is a bit of a loose, abstract term, in the sense I was writing. I was not, of course, talking about your Macintosh on your desk; but an abstract conception: computation. A mathemtical construction, finally completed after some false starts and incomplete prototypes (and here I am talking about both mechanical adding machines and formal logic systems) in the 1930s by three primary figures of importance: Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and Kurt Goedel. The Universal Turing Machine was a mathematical construction; an imaginary machine that was endowed with an infinite spool of paper tape sectioned into squares on which could be printed a limited set of symbols. Some of those symbols described a program that could operate the machine in any way possible. An automatic typewriter, if you will, that can read its own writing. But Turing proved it could perform any computation by any computer that could ever be built. And the first complete abstraction was born. An almost before the umbilical was cut, it was almost sentenced to death by a blow from Goedel with his Incompleteness Theorem; he showed that that universal computer wasn't so universal after all; it could never answer the most trivial questions about itself or others like it.
Turing was very interested in the human mind, and intelligence. His original dream was to make a machine simulate the human mind. He proposed a test that bears his name, claiming that any machine that could pass it should be legitimately considered intelligent. By all accounts he was optimistic that his dream would come true quite soon. That dream still remains elusive. Turing died young in tragic circumstances that serve as an immortal reminder to computer scientists about the destruction bigotry can wreak on the human mind. He was a homosexual; despite his unparalleled service to British intelligence during WWII, he was caught in a sting operation intended to trap homosexuals engaging in consensual sex. His sentence entailed being forced to take drugs that were intended to correct his "defect"; the drugs shrunk his genitals and threw him into fit of depression that drained him of all energy to work; it ended when he took his own life in 1954. Even to the end he was helping to build England's first physical, completely programmable computer. He was only 42 years old.
Yet since that time computers have progressed from behemoths which occupied the better part of a basketball court with the power of only a few thousand adds per second to microprocessors measuring less than a square centimeter that each can perform billions of adds per second. The first computers cost millions of dollars and were customly constructed by dozens of dedicated engineers over the period of months or years. Today, the computational power of the entire Earth in 1965 can be purchased anywhere for a mere $50. Computers today are a million times more powerful and a million times cheaper than the first models. That is a performance/price increase of one trillion to one.
And there're billions of them. They're in everything; dozens in your car, your cellphone, your TV, your microwave, your refrigerator, both in production and in consumer items. And every single place a computer occupies space it makes that good more efficient, more capable, safer, and often cheaper to produce.
This revolution, more than any other in the history of the planet, has established capitalism and free markets as the premiere socio-economic system. This revolution could not have happened with near the speed or impact if it were not for private enterprise doing the lion's share of development and advancement. Nearly every advancement in integrated circuits has happened in industry, and the bulk of today's software was written for profit. The pioneers profited handsomely for their efforts, and they did it in the most economically sustainable way possible, by offering cheaper products, more powerful hardware, more space, and better integration. And they didn't oppress a single soul--it's quite the opposite. Computers and products made possible by computers have offered an unparalleled bargain to producers and consumers alike; they made possible things that were thought impossible; they streamlined processes that increased profits of producers, paying for the next generation of advances, while still bringing down consumer prices. And they have brought advances in everything from medicine to gaming to boot.
The mental pathology of socialist thinkers who argue that optimal economic output comes from cooperation and public ownership has been discredited--no, worse--soundly and utterly trounced beyond recognition by the dynamism of free markets. All the classical critisms from socialist circles are almost entirely toothless when directed at the computer industry. Oppression of laborers? Jobs in technology, from manufacturing, architecting, and engineering, pay handsomely. Greedy industrialists pursuing power above people's lives? Tens of thousands of people have become multi-millionares, and dozens have become billionaires. And the billionaires' philanthropy is unmatched in history; providing grants, research money, whole university buildings, helping those starving in Africa. Environmental destruction? Computers produce no emissions; and hardware production plants are engineered to the strictest, self-imposed regulations ever, on top of an already low-emission business. Of all the electricity consumed by all computers everywhere, a large portion of the emissions produced in generating that electricity are offset by more fuel efficient cars made possible only by electronic fuel injection that is entirely computer controlled. Power savings in other areas due to automation is considerable, which is economically preferrable for producers because energy is an often unacknowledged, but certainly non-trivial component cost of production. Acceleration and automation of everything from commercial freight to jet liners removes still further costs of waste from the economy.
And the automation that computers are now making possible has not brought about any of the disaster unemployment scenarios that socialists and luddites have used against every advanced in industrialization for three centuries. America, even in the midst of the 2003 recession, never experienced unemployment much higher than 6%--contrast to Europe for example.
And the computer industry, like many break-out industries of the past, is a jewel of American innovation, directed by the best brains from around the world who care for nothing but making the best technology possible, powered by the ambition and drive of the American spirit. This alone should discredit leftists notions that the sun is somehow setting on America; in technology, we are still setting the pace and pushing the world forward.
The world will never be the same.
My exploration of Computer Science, from the breadth reached in an undergraduate education, though never as broad as I would have hoped, to the depth that I have chosen to develop from focusing on these fields, have given me an unique perspective on life. Strangely enough, as impersonal and rigid computers and their underpinnings of discrete mathematics, abstract algebra, and logic are, the field has enormous need for imaginative and creative minds to drive it. It is the ultimate expression of man's reasoning mind; a machine. It is neither emotional nor wayward, it is the perfect pupil, and the complete embodiment of an architect's pure genius. It admits no ambiguity, and where ambiguity has cropped up--in computer architecture, languages, communication protocols, electrical specifications--chaos and wasted effort is the inevitable result. No technology ever created has enjoyed the meteoric rise, the vast penetration, and astonishing rate of advancement that computers have. In many ways it is because a computer is more than a overblown calculator (a term once reserved for humans who carried out arithmetic operations on paper with pencils), and it is more than a blank monolith of nebulous existence that is mysterious or unknowable. It is imminently knowable; it is the ultimate tool, and it is man's finest creation to date.
We must never surrender the creation of the computer and all of the marvel it has unlocked to those whose believe that man is irrational and that progress is an accident. It more than anything yet created is a reification of reason, an instillation of creative genius, and a functioning, real, and entirely logical entity that proves its own existence. It defies anti-reason; it dispels it. It debunks the loose irrationalism of relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction. It was neither discovered nor happened upon nor mined from the earth. It is a creation, an establishment of principles that exists as true in this universe.
But let's not make it too holy. It is, after all, just a tool. And "computer" is a bit of a loose, abstract term, in the sense I was writing. I was not, of course, talking about your Macintosh on your desk; but an abstract conception: computation. A mathemtical construction, finally completed after some false starts and incomplete prototypes (and here I am talking about both mechanical adding machines and formal logic systems) in the 1930s by three primary figures of importance: Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and Kurt Goedel. The Universal Turing Machine was a mathematical construction; an imaginary machine that was endowed with an infinite spool of paper tape sectioned into squares on which could be printed a limited set of symbols. Some of those symbols described a program that could operate the machine in any way possible. An automatic typewriter, if you will, that can read its own writing. But Turing proved it could perform any computation by any computer that could ever be built. And the first complete abstraction was born. An almost before the umbilical was cut, it was almost sentenced to death by a blow from Goedel with his Incompleteness Theorem; he showed that that universal computer wasn't so universal after all; it could never answer the most trivial questions about itself or others like it.
Turing was very interested in the human mind, and intelligence. His original dream was to make a machine simulate the human mind. He proposed a test that bears his name, claiming that any machine that could pass it should be legitimately considered intelligent. By all accounts he was optimistic that his dream would come true quite soon. That dream still remains elusive. Turing died young in tragic circumstances that serve as an immortal reminder to computer scientists about the destruction bigotry can wreak on the human mind. He was a homosexual; despite his unparalleled service to British intelligence during WWII, he was caught in a sting operation intended to trap homosexuals engaging in consensual sex. His sentence entailed being forced to take drugs that were intended to correct his "defect"; the drugs shrunk his genitals and threw him into fit of depression that drained him of all energy to work; it ended when he took his own life in 1954. Even to the end he was helping to build England's first physical, completely programmable computer. He was only 42 years old.
Yet since that time computers have progressed from behemoths which occupied the better part of a basketball court with the power of only a few thousand adds per second to microprocessors measuring less than a square centimeter that each can perform billions of adds per second. The first computers cost millions of dollars and were customly constructed by dozens of dedicated engineers over the period of months or years. Today, the computational power of the entire Earth in 1965 can be purchased anywhere for a mere $50. Computers today are a million times more powerful and a million times cheaper than the first models. That is a performance/price increase of one trillion to one.
And there're billions of them. They're in everything; dozens in your car, your cellphone, your TV, your microwave, your refrigerator, both in production and in consumer items. And every single place a computer occupies space it makes that good more efficient, more capable, safer, and often cheaper to produce.
This revolution, more than any other in the history of the planet, has established capitalism and free markets as the premiere socio-economic system. This revolution could not have happened with near the speed or impact if it were not for private enterprise doing the lion's share of development and advancement. Nearly every advancement in integrated circuits has happened in industry, and the bulk of today's software was written for profit. The pioneers profited handsomely for their efforts, and they did it in the most economically sustainable way possible, by offering cheaper products, more powerful hardware, more space, and better integration. And they didn't oppress a single soul--it's quite the opposite. Computers and products made possible by computers have offered an unparalleled bargain to producers and consumers alike; they made possible things that were thought impossible; they streamlined processes that increased profits of producers, paying for the next generation of advances, while still bringing down consumer prices. And they have brought advances in everything from medicine to gaming to boot.
The mental pathology of socialist thinkers who argue that optimal economic output comes from cooperation and public ownership has been discredited--no, worse--soundly and utterly trounced beyond recognition by the dynamism of free markets. All the classical critisms from socialist circles are almost entirely toothless when directed at the computer industry. Oppression of laborers? Jobs in technology, from manufacturing, architecting, and engineering, pay handsomely. Greedy industrialists pursuing power above people's lives? Tens of thousands of people have become multi-millionares, and dozens have become billionaires. And the billionaires' philanthropy is unmatched in history; providing grants, research money, whole university buildings, helping those starving in Africa. Environmental destruction? Computers produce no emissions; and hardware production plants are engineered to the strictest, self-imposed regulations ever, on top of an already low-emission business. Of all the electricity consumed by all computers everywhere, a large portion of the emissions produced in generating that electricity are offset by more fuel efficient cars made possible only by electronic fuel injection that is entirely computer controlled. Power savings in other areas due to automation is considerable, which is economically preferrable for producers because energy is an often unacknowledged, but certainly non-trivial component cost of production. Acceleration and automation of everything from commercial freight to jet liners removes still further costs of waste from the economy.
And the automation that computers are now making possible has not brought about any of the disaster unemployment scenarios that socialists and luddites have used against every advanced in industrialization for three centuries. America, even in the midst of the 2003 recession, never experienced unemployment much higher than 6%--contrast to Europe for example.
And the computer industry, like many break-out industries of the past, is a jewel of American innovation, directed by the best brains from around the world who care for nothing but making the best technology possible, powered by the ambition and drive of the American spirit. This alone should discredit leftists notions that the sun is somehow setting on America; in technology, we are still setting the pace and pushing the world forward.
The world will never be the same.
posted by D. Vision at
6:32 PM
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