An Algorithmic Outlook

At the end of this post is a great history of early computational devices and the dawn of digital computing by Paul Dunne. Dunne has done a remarkable job of succinctly covering the movement from mechanical to electrical computing machines.

Dunne's recounting of Ada the Countess of Lovelace and Charles Babbage's pursuit is not to be missed. Living in the mechanical environment they possessed a mindset more appropriate to the 21st century. For visionaries like Lovelace, Babbage, and George Boole, an algorithmic sensibility set them ahead of their time. Its interesting to note the emergence of algorithmic (as opposed to geometric) thought within Babbage's own life.

The first thing to understanding computing is to understand that it is algorithmic, it is process driven. As some linguists have concluded, the function of a word or morpheme defines its meaning. In the computing environment, the basic elements are defined by their processes. Together these basic elements and their processes form the system. For anyone born into the computing environment, this way of viewing the world is second nature, its subconscious.

The syntax of Boolean algebra is an incredible statement of this worldview, perhaps only more elegantly captured in the syntax of Instant Messaging and Text Messaging. The speed of the 'IMs' and 'texts' of the computing environment are not significantly greater than the telegrams of the electrical environment. It was only in the process-driven computing environment that the letters and symbols themselves took on greater meaning as defined by their role in the communication process. It is algorithmic thought that makes a semi-colon paired with an end-parentheses far more meaningful than perhaps 100 letters of the alphabet strung together in a linear fashion. ;)

It is know wonder then, that when we look at an electron we can only know its position, but not its velocity, or visa versa. As one would expect when peering into the workings of nature through an algorithmic lens, we can only see where the process is headed or what the intermediate result is. Despite this 'spooky behavior' as Einstein called it, quantum physics has a better model for most phenomenon than the Newtonian physics wrought from the print environment.

This probability and process nature of quantum physics is one of the defining characteristics of the computing environment. The study of quantum physics grows within the computing environment that makes the calculations possible.

It may seem ironic that the semi-conductor wrought from quantum physics has driven the expansion (better, encapsulation) of the computing environment. Looking ahead to the next post, we will see this (what at first glance is circularity) as another defining characteristic of the computing environment.

Mechanical Aids to Computation and the Development of Algorithms