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History and Philosophy of Computing

Third International Conference, HaPoC 2015, Pisa, Italy, October 8-11, 2015, Revised Selected Papers

herausgegeben von: Fabio Gadducci, Mirko Tavosanis

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This volume constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the Third IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing, held in Pisa, Italy in October 2015.
The 18 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from the 30 papers presented at the conference. They cover topics ranging from the world history of computing to the role of computing in the humanities and the arts.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Invited Talks

Frontmatter

Wherefore Art Thou Semantics of Computation?

Abstract

Nearly 60 years have passed since the notion of semantics was first used to explain Programming Languages. There was quite some divergence of opinions, at the time, in what the semantics of semantics was supposed to be. Today, in face of the plethora of different models and logical systems based thereupon, are we in a better position to address this socratic question? We analyse philosophical issues revolving around the Foundations of Formal Reasoning, Proof Cultures, Logical Frameworks, the Algebraic/Co-algebraic Duality, and Games. We put forward the thesis that, rather than being a drawback, plurality is what makes Semantics useful. In that Semantics of Computation is a “partita doppia”, a double check of what we think we understand in computing.

Furio Honsell

Logic, Formal Linguistics and Computing in France: From Non-reception to Progressive Convergence

Abstract

How did the theory and practice of computing interact to generate a new discipline, computer science? Studying the French scene, in comparison with other countries, reveals that in most cases computing developed initially as an ancillary technique of applied mathematics, with little awareness of the path-breaking theories of computability elaborated in the 1930s. This was particularly clear in France, where mathematical logic was almost inexistent and disregarded by the Bourbaki group.

It was only in the early 1960s that researchers in the emerging field of computing felt the need for theoretical models, and discovered the Turing machine and recursive functions. Simultaneously, an interest for language theories and information structures, fostered by practical projects such as machine translation, converged with issues raised by software development and the nascent theory of automata.

The convergence of these diverse intellectual agenda was central in the process of construction of the new discipline.

Pierre Mounier-Kuhn

Interactive Spatial Sound Intervention: A Case Study

Abstract

Bodily positioned intervention art creates some remarkable challenges for the conception, development and achievement of interactive, electronic sonic works. Analysis of multiple spectators, habitat reactiveness, display modes, socio-political impact and planning strategies are considered through a case study of my own artwork. I trace the challenges in this field using a recently installed interactive piece, Sonic Space #05, which unfolds as a functional interrelated system with undetermined pathways to real-time sound creation. This case study provides an investigation into the demands made by the physical world upon intervention art and the subsequent results.

Elisabetta Senesi

Regular Submissions

Frontmatter

Theory of Knowing Machines: Revisiting Gödel and the Mechanistic Thesis

Abstract

Church-Turing Thesis, mechanistic project, and Gödelian Arguments offer different perspectives of informal intuitions behind the relationship existing between the notion of intuitively provable and the definition of decidability by some Turing machine. One of the most formal lines of research in this setting is represented by the theory of knowing machines, based on an extension of Peano Arithmetic, encompassing an epistemic notion of knowledge formalized through a modal operator denoting intuitive provability. In this framework, variants of the Church-Turing Thesis can be constructed and interpreted to characterize the knowledge that can be acquired by machines. In this paper, we survey such a theory of knowing machines and extend some recent results proving that a machine can know its own code exactly but cannot know its own correctness (despite actually being sound). In particular, we define a machine that, for (at least) a specific case, knows its own code and knows to be sound.

Alessandro Aldini, Vincenzo Fano, Pierluigi Graziani

Algorithmic in the 12th Century: The Carmen de Algorismo by Alexander de Villa Dei

Abstract

This paper aims to update the knowledge about one of the oldest medieval handbooks on calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals in positional notation, the so-called Carmen de algorismo, also known as Algorismus metricus, and traditionally attributed to the French scholar Alexander de Villa Dei. This work had a remarkable spread during the Middle Ages in many European countries, alongside the Algorismus prosaicus by Johannes de Sacrobosco. In our study we will portray the overall picture of the spread of new techniques of calculation with Hindu-Arabic numerals in cultured circles and of the consequent literature, since it is different from the contemporary works called abacus books, devoted to merchant and practical calculations. Despite its importance, the work has not yet been thoroughly investigated both for its relative difficulty, because it is composed in verse by a refined author, and for the presence of a contemporary literature of the same content, starting precisely from the one by Sacrobosco.

Nadia Ambrosetti

From Close to Distant and Back: How to Read with the Help of Machines

Abstract

In recent years a common trend characterised by the adoption of text mining methods for the study of digital sources emerged in digital humanities, often in opposition to traditional hermeneutic approaches. In our paper, we intend to show how text mining methods will always need a strong support from the humanist. On the one hand we remark how humanities research involving computational techniques should be thought of as a three steps process: from close reading (identification of a specific case study, initial feature selection) to distant reading (text mining analysis) to close reading again (evaluation of the results, interpretation, use of the results). Moreover, we highlight how failing to understand the importance of all the three steps is a major cause for the mistrust in text mining techniques developed around the humanities. On the other hand we observe that text mining techniques could be a very promising tool for the humanities and that researchers should not renounce to such approaches, but should instead experiment with advanced methods such as the ones belonging to the family of deep learning. In this sense we remark that, especially in the field of digital humanities, exploiting complementarity between computational methods and humans will be the most advantageous research direction.

Rudi Bonfiglioli, Federico Nanni

Computing, Design, Art: Reflections on an Innovative Moment in History

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the role of art and design in the history and philosophy of computing, and the role of computing in models of design and art. It offers insights arising from research into a period in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in the UK, when computing became more available to artists and designers, focusing on Bruce Archer (1922–2005) and John Lansdown (1929–1999) in London. It suggests that models of computing interacted with conceptualisations of art, design and creative activities in important ways.

Stephen Boyd Davis, Simone Gristwood

From Cells as Computation to Cells as Apps

Abstract

We reflect on the computational aspects that are embedded in life at the molecular and cellular level, where life machinery can be understood as a massively distributed system whose macroscopic behaviour is an emerging property of the interaction of its components. Such a relatively new perspective, clearly pursued by systems biology, is contributing to the view that biology is, in several respects, a quantitative science. The recent developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology, noticeably, are pushing the computational interpretation of biology even further, envisaging the possibility of a programmable biology. Several in-silico, in-vitro and in-vivo results make such a possibility a very concrete one. The long-term implications of such an “extended” idea of programmable living hardware, as well as the applications that we intend to develop on those “computers”, pose fundamental questions.

Andrea Bracciali, Enrico Cataldo, Luisa Damiano, Claudio Felicioli, Roberto Marangoni, Pasquale Stano

«Omnia Numerorum Videntur Ratione Formata». A ‘Computable World’ Theory in Early Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

Digital philosophy is a speculative theory that places the bit at the foundation of reality and explains its evolution as a computational process. This theory reinterprets some previous philosophical intuitions, starting from the Pythagorean theory of numbers as the beginning of all things and as a criterion for the comprehension of reality. Significant antecedents of this computational philosophical approach can be found in the tradition of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. One of the less investigated chapters of this ‘pre-history’ of digital philosophy can be found in the Ottonian Renaissance, when we can identify theorists of what has been called – in reference to modern authors as Leibniz – a ‘computational paradigm’. The paper focuses on the works of Abbo of Fleury and Gerbert of Aurillac. Their theoretical basis is the famous verse of Wis 11, 21 (Omnia creata sunt in numero mensura et pondere).

Luigi Catalani

From urelements to Computation

A Journey Through Applications of Fraenkel’s Permutation Model in Computer Science

Abstract

Around 1922-1938, a new permutation model of set theory was defined. The permutation model served as a counterexample in the first proof of independence of the Axiom of Choice from the other axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Almost a century later, a model introduced as part of a proof in abstract mathematics fostered a plethora of research results, ranging from the area of syntax and semantics of programming languages to minimization algorithms and automated verification of systems. Among these results, we find Lawvere-style algebraic syntax with binders, final-coalgebra semantics with resource allocation, and minimization algorithms for mobile systems. These results are also obtained in various different ways, by describing, in terms of category theory, a number of models equivalent to the permutation model.

We aim at providing both a brief history of some of these developments, and a mild introduction to the recent research line of “nominal computation theory”, where the essential notion of name is declined in several different ways.

Vincenzo Ciancia

The Contribution of Carl Adam Petri to Our Understanding of ‘Computing’

Abstract

Carl Adam Petri is well known for introducing the nets having his name. It is less known that net theory was, for Petri, the kernel of a radical shift in scientific knowledge. Carl Adam Petri has not written extensively during his life and this may have been an important reason that only the most applied part of his approach, the use of nets for designing concurrent systems, has become largely popular. In this paper, I try to popularize in a larger community the radical novelty and the relevance of the approach Petri used for developing scientific knowledge of physical and social phenomena. In short, we can say that Petri’s approach assumes that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is rooted in human experience and there is no way, and no necessity, to connect it directly to an external reality.

This has, as we will see, much to do with the concept of computing and, indirectly, with the relations between science and philosophy. This paper will summarize three aspects of Petri’s thinking, which deserve a wider attention: the notion of model, the new algebraic foundations for a theory of modeling (whose main example are Petri Nets) and its application to Human Communication Pragmatics.

Giorgio De Michelis

Frege’s Habilitationsschrift: Magnitude, Number and the Problems of Computability

Abstract

The present paper proposes a new perspective on the place of Frege’s work in the history of computability theory, by calling attention to his 1874 Habilitationsschrift. It shows the prominent role played by functional iteration in Frege’s early efforts to provide a general concept of numerical magnitude, attached to an embryonic recursion schema and the use of functions as expressive means. Moreover, a connection is suggested between the iteration theory used and developed by Frege in his treatise and Schröder’s original concern for the mathematical treatment of the problem of the feasibility of algorithmic computation.

Juan Luis Gastaldi

Trente ans ou la Vie d′un scientifique

Abstract

Anatoly Kitov is one of the outstanding representatives of the first generation of scientists who created Soviet cybernetics, computer engineering and informatics. This paper presents an overview of his more than three decades long attempts to prove to the Soviet leaders the necessity of creation of a nation-wide computer network automated system for the planning and management of the socialist economy. The overview includes a review of Kitov’s appeals to the Communist Party leaders Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. For the first time Kitov’s struggle with the Communist Party and Soviet bureaucracy during perestroika is described and some related documents are published as well.

Vladimir A. Kitov, Valery V. Shilov, Sergey A. Silantiev

From Information to Perception

The New Design of the Emerging Computer Technologies and Its Effects

Abstract

The aim of the work is to introduce the elements we need to analyse the new emerging digital technologies, focussing on the novelties they introduce.

These new technologies are designed to merge computers into our world by being intertwined with our daily activities and by visualising digital objects in our surroundings.

Computers, while calculators at their inception, have been conceived of as information processing devices, their use as data processing. Today the same technology directly aims to develop a new way of being present in the world. If we continue to use our previous conception of them, too much oriented toward the captured and computed information, we are at risk of loosing the innovative aspects of these devices concerning the way they relate to the users’ life.

History shows that the computers’ design has evolved and so has the role of these devices in society.

In the second part we will use a phenomenological and post-phenomenological analysis to tackle the novelties these devices are introducing. Especially we will focus on the term “transparent” and we will show how we need to use two different notions of transparency in order to better understand what these devices produce.

Therefore, in conclusion, we will show how we need to think of the possible effects of these new technologies, not in term of the information computed by the device, but in terms of the device’s actions in our world. Computers must be something which deeply changes our world by making it literally “digitally” embedded.

New computer technologies are making the “data” perceptual and so the notion of “information” has to be re-framed.

Nicola Liberati

Several Types of Types in Programming Languages

Abstract

Types are an important part of any modern programming language, but we often forget that the concept of type we understand nowadays is not the same it was perceived in the sixties. Moreover, we conflate the concept of “type” in programming languages with the concept of the same name in mathematical logic, an identification that is only the result of the convergence of two different paths, which started apart with different aims. The paper will present several remarks (some historical, some of more conceptual character) on the subject, as a basis for a further investigation. We will argue that there are three different characters at play in programming languages, all of them now called types: the technical concept used in language design to guide implementation; the general abstraction mechanism used as a modelling tool; the classifying tool inherited from mathematical logic. We will suggest three possible dates ad quem for their presence in the programming language literature, suggesting that the emergence of the concept of type in computer science is relatively independent from the logical tradition, until the Curry-Howard isomorphism will make an explicit bridge between them.

Simone Martini

Playfulness and the Advent of Computerization in Spain: The National Club of ZX81 Users

Abstract

The beginning and later widespread use of the early microcomputers and home computers in the 1980s were strongly related to the emergency of the first computer games. However, this important episode has traditionally focused on accomplishments that identify key moments in the past such as identifying important firsts and successful corporate innovators. According to this, we may neglect the valuable contributions of other very different actors, such as politicians, programmers, designers, distributors, software and hardware stores, hobbyists, and fan communities. Thus, this paper is concerned with some of these myriad other subjects, including also their everyday practices. By giving voice to them, we start revealing a diverse set of activities and roles that collectively contributed to the shaping of computing technology, gaming practices and even the gaming industry in their respective local contexts.

Ignasi Meda-Calvet

Impact of Informatics on Mathematics and Its Teaching

On the Importance of Epistemological Analysis to Feed Didactical Research

Abstract

In this article, we come back to the seminal role of epistemology in didactics of sciences and particularly in mathematics. We defend that the epistemological research on the interactions between mathematics and informatics is necessary to feed didactical research on today’s mathematics learning and teaching situations, impacted by the development of informatics. We develop some examples to support this idea and propose some perspectives to attack this issue.

Simon Modeste

Epistemic Opacity, Confirmation Holism and Technical Debt: Computer Simulation in the Light of Empirical Software Engineering

Abstract

Software-intensive Science, and in particular the method of modelling large and complex systems by means of computer simulation, presents acute dilemmas of epistemic trust. Some authors have contended that simulations are essentially epistemically opaque vis and vis a human agent, others that complex simulation models suffer from an inescapable confirmation holism. We argue that the shortcomings lie in the failure of modellers to adopt sound Software Engineering practices, and that the elevation of computational models into superior epistemic authorities runs counter to principles that are common to both Science and Software Engineering.

Julian Newman

The Brain in Silicon: History, and Skepticism

Abstract

This paper analyzes the idea of designing computer hardware inspired by the knowledge of how the brain works. This endeavor has lurked around the twists and turns of the computer history since its beginning, and it is still an open challenge today. We briefly review the main steps of this long lasting challenge. Despite obvious progress and changes in the computer technology and in the knowledge of neural mechanisms, along this history there is an impressive similarity in the arguments put forward in support of potential advantages of neural hardware over traditional microprocessor architectures. In fact, almost no results of all that effort reached maturity. We argue that these arguments are theoretically flawed, and therefore the premises for the success of neuromorphic hardware are weak.

Alessio Plebe, Giorgio Grasso

The Role of Computers in Visual Art

Abstract

The beginnings of computer art can be traced back to the 1960s, when three computer scientists began, almost at the same time and independently from one another, to use their computers to create geometrical designs, among them was Frieder Nake, then working at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Some of Nake’s works were shown in the gallery “Wendelin Niedlich” in Stuttgart in November 1965, which can be considered as the first contact between an output of a computer system and the Artworld, and the reaction of most art critics was rather dismissive. This work analyzes Nake’s reply to such criticism in the form of three considerations: (a) the novelty of generative procedures by means of pseudorandom numbers; (b) the evolution of authorship thanks to code parametrization; (c) a recognition of the key role of the audience in the creation of artistic experiences. By means of examples from modern art and from contemporary art we will show that (a) and (b) only refer to procedures that are indeed made more efficient by the use of computers, but do not need these devices to exists, whereas (c) seems to shed light on a field that is essentially based on today’s computing technology, namely, interactive art.

Mario Verdicchio

In Search of the Roots of Formal Computation

Abstract

In a culmination of a long development, it was seen clearly in the early 1930s that steps of formal computation are also steps of formal deduction as defined by recursion equations and other similar principles of arithmetic. Followers of Kant’s doctrine of the synthetic a priori in arithmetic missed by a hair’s breadth the proper recursive definition of addition that appeared instead first in a book of Hermann Grassmann of 1861. A line can be followed from it to Hankel, Schröder, Dedekind, Peano, and Skolem, the last mentioned marking the birth of recursive arithmetic, a discipline firmly anchored in the foundations of mathematics by the presentation Paul Bernays made of it in his monument, the Grundlagen der Mathematik of 1934.

Jan von Plato

Backmatter

Titel: History and Philosophy of Computing
herausgegeben von: Fabio Gadducci
Mirko Tavosanis
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-47286-7
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47285-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47286-7