Lamport: “The Future of Computing: Logic or Biology?” “We understand automobiles. There are no homeopathic automobile repair shops, that try to repair your car by putting infinitesimal dilutions of rust in the gas tank. There are no automotive faith healers, who lay their hands on the hood and pray. People reserve such superstitions for things […]

What follows is an essay which I wrote in a fit of rage at the state of current computer technology roughly a year ago. It is entirely unpolished, unedited, and probably contains quite a few words and concepts meaningful only to myself. I originally had no intention of ever making it public, but after reading […]

“Throughout my life I have known people who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. You know the ones: grew up in a strong community, went to good public or private schools, were able to attend a top undergraduate school like Harvard or Caltech, and then were admitted to the best graduate schools. Their […]

Anyone who has read CS papers from ~1960-1980 and compared the original-idea-density to those of today might think forbidden thoughts. While meandering through stories of unorthodox computational architectures, I was overcome with a sharp feeling of “where are they now?” Who stole the original thinkers of that era, and planted type-theoretical bureaucrats in their place? […]

Many of us have not forgotten the joy of playing with toys which let your mind run free: Lego blocks, Erector, etc. On the other hand, it appears that the larval programmers of today are skipping the stage of development involving the digital equivalents of such toys. Specifically I am talking about Logo, BASIC, and […]

The moment came about two years ago, in the middle of a lecture on biologically-inspired algorithms (EC, ant-colony optimization, etc.) My attention had strayed so very briefly – and yet the material immediately ceased to make sense. It seemed obvious that continuing to follow the proof on the board was futile – the house of […]