Mercurial > hg > BCS
diff CR_preface.txt @ 23:0a12a284beb7
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author | Henry S Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> |
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date | Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:50:09 +0000 |
parents | 28fdea8f3e67 |
children | 7688b405c09f |
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--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/CR_preface.txt Sat Nov 02 15:50:09 2024 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,167 @@ +Born December 1949. + +After starting a degree at Oberlin in 1967, dropped out without +completing 3rd year. + +Out to BC with Katy in the fall of 1969, back to Cambridge and +Philadelphia to see respective families. + +Had to get out of the US (draft), so that winter took over the old job +of his brother Arnold in an NRC high-energy Physics lab, living with +Katy and Arnold in an old farmhouse in a posh neighbourhood in Ottawa. +Very snowy winter, record-breaking, 18 feet?, long driveway and a lot +of shovelling, piled up to the 2nd floor. Involve with Ottawa QUaker +Meeting, a youth group, and a Mennonite youth group. Stayed through +the several years. March 1971, employer partnering with the Univ. of +Chicago Physics dept and LRL in Berkeley, went there, installed a +PDP-9 / 15, in a 40-ft Fruehof trailer, moved from Ottawa to Fermi +Lab, where Brian's office was. Programmed in machine language (see +below). He could 'program like crazy' in the air-conditioned trailer, +high-volume music in head-phones, but couldn't write English. Lived +in a hotel in Hyde ? park. They owned an Austin Mini bought for $100 +in summer of 1970, working at a Quaker peace conference on Rhinestone +island in lake near Ottawa. + +Katy went out to Berkeley that spring, where the experiment was to +take place. Married in June of 1971 at Pendle Hill / Swarthmore, then +back to Berkeley. Lived in a back yard house at Telegraph and Shannon +(?). Legally a Canadian resident notionally in US on a business trip. +Experiment ran, wrapped and went back to Ottawa. He wanted to stay in +US, they ended up (autumn 1971? 1972?) living with his parents in +Cambridge, where WCS was by then head of the new Center for the Study +of World Religions at Harvard. + +[Applied to Graduate School at MIT in EECS, started taking some +courses, but eventually MIT admin said be couldn't be admitted w/o a +UG degree.] + +Interested in being a social inquiry major, in order to study the +politics of high technology, how we get to transferring to EECS from +that goal is not clear. + +It was very quickly clear that the understanding of computing that the +social scientists were critiquing was not [Programming in machine +language] the computing that I know. So I need to get clear on what +computing really is, so that I can legitimately critique it. So I +thought I had to go into the heart of the beast, as it were. + +Terry Winograd provided the friendship and both social and 'official' +support-structure to allow Brian to start to express himself out loud, +as it were. + +Saying to Fodor, ref. Tom Swift and his procedural grandmother, that +"this is not how compilation worked", Fodor was blustery but +open-minded enough to say "this is your subject area, I'm sure you're +rightl tell me how it does work". He and Fodor were friends, but +later Fodor "curdled". + +Dog hanging on to a scented cloth -- sitting at the console of a 360 +and keying in instructinos and debugging by staring at the pattern of +lights that the console frooze in. + +Articulating an understanding of computing that would do justice to his +intuitive understanding of computing as he had experienced it is the +theme of all his intellectual work. + +"Course on compilers, I had written a compiler, I'd written a tiny OS +for a PDP-9 running a physics experiment". Pat Winston sat me down +and took me through the requirements for a CSEE degree, and decided +he'd satisfied them all. But he needed a Batchelor's thesis, so they +took a paper from a course he'd taken in the autumn, called "Comments +on Comments", and added some stuff, it got marked and accepted as his +thesis, so awarded the degree and could actually be enrolled as a +student under the supervision of Peter Szolovits. + +[CSLI not particularly relevant] + +[CPSR?] + +---------- +Torn between religion and physics as an undergraduate. + +MIT, 1974++ MSc thesis _Levels, Layers and Planes_, about +architectural properties of computer science +There are no particulars in physics [ref. deiexis discussion, where is +it] +WHat drove me out of social inquiry and back to department 6 was +needing to be back in the practice. That skill was not somthing that +people on the outside understood. + +Lens on a conical base, watchmakers, with oil and iron filings, that +allowed you to manifest the data on digital mag tape. No disks on the +PDP-9. That concrete engagement with the computer affected my sense +of digitality. + +I wanted there to be types, not tokens. Set theory has no constants +(e.g. pi, e, i), functions, derivatives, intergrals are types in a +way. Wanted a KR that didn't depend on token identity (no eq tests in +the interpreter). + +LLP was an attempt to get the things, "kernel facts", of a KRL to be +types, not tokens (cf *car* and *cdr* vs. differentiation and +integration), the ontology of the computational. + +[HST mentions intergral signs and script deltas] Brian says +"syncategoramaticity + +Promote the eq tests into type tests (in the interpreter). + +"You want to arrange the metaphysics so that _everything_ falls out" +G. Nunberg of BCS + +My imagination was arrested by essentially foundational questions +about ... this stuff. Not interested in applications, AI as such, +etc. + +Still wanted to know what computing was., remains true up to what's in +this book, CR. + +Something else that makes me feel uncomfortable about CS from the +outset: Conversation with MM: for you MM science is a form of worship, +whereas science is a form of theology for me (BCS), so I look to CS +not just to manifest the glory of God, but also to explain it. + +Science should do justice to that. + +Being shy around Peter and Butler, something else made me skittish, +something I needed in order to be at peace: a warmth / humility. Why +I was at peace with [John] Haugeland. [HST: JH wasn't a +programmer. BCS: Yes, but he programmed [in] Postscript. BCS: We +disagreed about typography]. + +Had a sense with JH that even though he knew a lot more philosophy +than I did, that we were looking together at relative +clauses/propositional claims, not that he was scrutinising +me. [ref. Andee Rubin] + +In the book I claim that deferential semantics is the heart of +intentionality. "There is more in heaven and on earth than is drempt +of in your philosophy". CS is fundamentally an intentional subject +matter, and that its intentional character has been hidden, and that +its use of semantics has usurped it for mechanistic purposes. + +All semantical vocabulary has been redefined in mechanistic terms: +"the semantics of X" == "what will happen if X is processed" + +Thereby all humility and deference is lost. + +[What about Phi vs. Psi, 'full [?] procedural consequence'] + +If you are interested in _real_ semantics, ... what's a poor boy to +do? + + + +------------ +Foundations of/Philosophy of Computation + +Lisp was 'broken', 2-Lisp was a flawed attempt to fix it, 3-Lisp takes +us in to new territory. + +Don't think you have to be a specialist to read this book. + +Effective vs non-Effective is actually new: at the book boundaries, +project onto the effective [?] + + +