Tags / 35 quotes from 18 sources
#computer
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
What 32-bit machines mean
You can begin to see why we refer to 64- and 32-bit machines to describe or classify computers—this corresponds naturally to the base two numbers. A 32-bit machine uses 32 bits to identify each address in its memory. This can also refer to the set of wires that connects the…
True and false as mere convention
Returning to infinity, it turns out that there is at least a conceptual relationship between the infinity of values between one and zero, and the infinity of values that voltage can have on a computer switch. The binary logic that underlies the computer is an approximation of…
Ones and zeros mean nothing to the computer
From an electrical engineering perspective, the messy stuff in between one and zero does travel down wires, through chips, and in packets. Computer switches are actually not either on or off. Both physically and electrically, computer switches, transistors, or logic circuits…
Voltage values are a human invention
As I mentioned, when voltage is measured and digitized using signal processing technology, the probability that the real voltage on a computer chip has a particular value is negligible. This is a subtle but very important point. It is the fundamental fact about moving from the…
Computers don't really compute
On a deeper level, which we might call the ontological level, the distinction between analog and digital disappears, as both concepts like “analog” and “digital” are ultimately epistemic tools humans have invented to describe natural and man-made signals. On a computer chip the…
Circuit designers chase steep voltage jumps
Circuit designers try to make the voltage jump as fast as possible from Logical Zero to Logical One by making the
The Logical ½ behind computer glitches
function represented by the sloping line in the grey area very steep. Nevertheless, in practice the line between one and zero is actually rather fuzzy. This situation recurs on every circuit, which means that at any point in the computer’s processors, a Logical ½ signal can be…
Computers are like comic-book characters
one of the more counterintuitive parts to this argument is that computers themselves are not really performing computations. Manzotti argues that computers are simply “transferring electricity from one place to another and dissipating a huge amount of it. Computations and…
Data - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Information vs data
Beynon-Davies uses the concept of a sign to distinguish between data and information; data is a series of symbols, while information occurs when the symbols are used to refer to something.[5][6] It is people and computers who collect data and impose patterns on it. These…
Epigrams On Programming
Computers that speak English
If your computer speaks English it was probably made in Japan.
The computer in our skulls
The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standardization of real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.
Turing machine
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton hotel on its peak.
Computers process numbers, not symbols
Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.
From Encyclopedia To Ontology: Toward Dynamic Representation Of The Discipline Of Philosophy
Methodological criticism: inpho is not a hierarchy of being
The first line of criticism comes from those who believe the word ‘ontology’ has been stretched too far from its original metaphysical roots, feeling that it is more misleading than useful when referring to a formal data representation rather than an actual hierarchy of being…
Computational ontology vs formal ontology
Our approach to representing the discipline derives from what computer and information scientists call “formal ontology.” However, we will avoid using this term because some researchers sensitive to Husserl’s distinction between “formal ontology” and “material ontology” prefer…
Hamlet On The Holodeck
The holodeck idea
First introduced on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' in 1987, the holodeck consists of an empty black cube covered in white gridlines upon which a computer can project elaborate simulations by combining holography with magnetic "force fields" and energy-to-matter conversions…
Logo
Seymour Papert had developed the LOGO programming language that allowed children to develop mathematical concepts by choreographing the actions of magic sprites that raced across the screen. A follower of Piaget, Papert believed that computers are tools for thinking and should…
Internazionale » Prendiamo Appunti
Digital reading
Uno studio condotto da Pam Mueller di Princeton e da Daniel Oppenheimer della Ucla ha comparato i risultati degli studenti che avevano trascritto le parole del loro professore in maniera tradizionale con chi l’aveva fatto usando un computer: mentre i secondi erano riusciti a…
Introducing Artificial Intelligence (Henry Brighton and Howard Selina)
The mystery of conscious machinery
For Searle, the nature of the machinery required for consciousness is a mystery. He makes no claim to have an answer explaining why computers cannot support properties such as understanding and consciousness, but brains can. In contrast, Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist…
Symbols by themselves are meaningless shapes
Searle’s argument concerns the inability of the symbols being manipulated to mean anything. By themselves, symbols are meaningless shapes realized by, in the case of a conventional computer, a pattern of electrical activity. Any meaning we confer to the symbols is parasitic on…
Lifelog - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Lifeloggers capture their whole lives
Lifeloggers (also known as lifebloggers or lifegloggers) typically wear computers in order to capture their entire lives, or large portions of their lives.
Man Buys $27 Of Bitcoin, Forgets About Them, Finds They're Now Worth $886k | Technology | Theguardian.com
Bitcoin without banks
In traditional banking the banks keep a record of how much money you have. They deal with all the security to make sure people can't claim they have more money than they do. Bitcoin is designed to do away with this centralisation. Each customer keeps track of their own balance…
Mining bitcoin gets exponentially harder
To start it took 1000 calculations to reward a bitcoin, something easily achieved by one computer that was doing 100 calculations per second. However there were a few other computers/miners all mining the SAME bitcoin. After 999 calculations were made the computer that (by…
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
Levels of description
Any complex system can be described in different ways. Thus, for example, a car engine can be characterized in terms of its molecular structure, in terms of its gross physical shape, in terms of its component parts, etc. It is tempting to describe this variability of…
Computation is in the eye of the beholder
When I add two plus two to get four, that computation is not observer relative. I am doing that regardless of what anybody thinks. But when I punch: ”2+2 =” on my pocket calculator and it prints out “4” it knows nothing of computation, arithmetic, or symbols, because it knows…
Notizie Di Libri E Cultura Del Corriere Della Sera
Fear of missing out (fomo)
Ma gli Internet Blocking Productivity Software, i programmi creati per bloccare l’accesso alla email e ai propri profili sui social network, funzionano davvero? «Si tratta di palliativi — spiega Luciano Floridi, filosofo e membro eletto della British Computer Society —…
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
The computer that thought it was res cogitans
There was a wonderful cartoon that circulated around university departments when I was an undergraduate that dramatised this fallacy beautifully. A thought bubble emerges from a computer. ‘I think,’ it says. In the next frame, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Cogito ergo sum, in…
Dennett: the self as user illusion
The philosopher Daniel Dennett takes a similar line, calling the perception of a unitary controlling mind a ‘veridical illusion’. ‘It’s an illusion in the same way the desktop on your computer is an illusion,’ he told me. ‘There aren’t any little yellow files on your hard disc…
The Philosophical Computer: Exploratory Essays In Philosophical Computer Modeling
Computers
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (Pablo Picasso)
The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web (definition)
The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.
Towards An Ontology Of Software: A Requirements Engineering Perspective
Software constrains an external environment
software is usually intended as an artifact whose ulti- mate purpose is constraining the behavior of an environment external to the computer, which the computer monitors and controls by means of transducers bridging between symbolic data and physical properties. In the case of…
Machine, environment and their interface
In our understanding, the two ovals represent the possible phenomena involving the environment (to the left) and a programmable plat- form connected to the environment, called the machine (to the right). The intersection represents phenomena at the interface between the machine…
What Is Collective Intelligence? - Assembl
Collective intelligence
Intelligence is not just something that happens inside individual minds. It also arises within groups of individuals and this phenomenon can be quite powerful. [...] The widely accepted definition states that collective intelligence is the ability of a group of people to be…
What Is The Difference Between A String And A Byte String?
The only thing that a computer can store is bytes
The only thing that a computer can store is bytes. To store anything in a computer, you must first encode it, i.e. convert it to bytes. For example: If you want to store music, you must first encode it using MP3, WAV, etc. If you want to store a picture, you must first encode…
Where Are The Semantics In The Semantic Web?
Problem of term heterogeneity and different modeling styles
Even if we assume a shared language and compatible conceptualizations, it is still possible, indeed likely, that different people will build different ontologies for the same domain. Two different terms may have the same meaning and the same term may have two different…