About Vic Grout
Futurist. Socialist. Vegan. Doomsayer.
Ethics/Futurology Professor.
Author of 'CONSCIOUS' https://vicgrout.net/the-book/
What’s your favourite terrible technological prediction? There are plenty to choose from, that’s for sure. The following is just a brief list of the most infamous computing-based futurology howlers (oldest to newest):
- “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”, Thomas Watson: IBM chairman (1943) (* or was it someone else?)
- “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons”, Popular Mechanics (1949)
- “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year”, Prentice Hall: Business Books Editor (1957)
- “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”, Ken Olsen: DEC founder (1977)
- “640K ought to be enough for anybody”, Bill Gates (1981) (* or did he really?)
- “We will never make a 32-bit operating system”, Bill Gates (1989)
- “Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time”, Bill Gates (2004)
- “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput”, Alan Sugar (2005)
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7 Comments | tags: Bertrand Russell, Bill Gates, Computing future, Fundamentalism, Futurology, Internet of Things, Intolerance, Michael Moorcock, Predicting the future, Privacy, Science fiction, StarTrek, The Singularity | posted in Academia, Computer Science, Computing, Education, Engineering, Hardware, Philosophy, Politics, Science
There’s an appreciable risk that this post may be considered sacrilegious within the programming world. If there’s one thing, even just one tiny, single thing, that every programmer knows about teaching programming, it’s that the first lesson should be how to output the string, “Hello world!” (There’s some dispute as to whether the ‘w’ should be capitalised but the ‘!’ is entirely necessary.) How heretical would it be to suggest that, not only is this probably not the best place to start, but that a better alternative can be found by turning around a bottle of shampoo?
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Leave a comment | tags: Algorithm, Algorithms, Computer programming, Hello world!, Introductory programming, Languages, Programming, Programming language, Programs, Sequence selection repetition, Teaching programming | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Computing, Education, Programming, Software
When the Four Colour Theorem (FCT) was finally ‘proved’ in 1976, it upset a lot of mathematicians. It was the first significant mathematical concept to be proved with a good deal of help from a computer and, for many, that didn’t make it a real proof. Although we’re largely (maybe not entirely) OK with it now, the objections at the time weren’t just theorists’ snobbery. At the heart of it all were some fundamental questions about the role a computer could or should play in formal logic.
Essentially, the FCT says that the maximum number of different colours needed to colour a map, so that no bordering countries are the same colour, is four. (Colours can touch at a point but not at an edge.) It’s easy to show that five will always do the trick and, in fact, most normal maps only need three. However, certain types of map certainly seemed to need four so was four always enough? Continue reading
1 Comment | tags: Computer proof, Formal methods, Formal proof, Four color theorem, Math, Mathematics, Maths, Problem solving, Program correctness, Program verification, Sunday Times | posted in Algorithms, Computer Science, Computing, Mathematics, Philosophy, Programming, Software
That looks like a hopelessly vague question, and it is unless we’re prepared to clarify it a bit. On the other hand, we already know there are some impossible problems so surely there are some that are just hard? Again, we’ll need to work out what on earth we’re talking about here. Let’s start with what we actually mean by a problem in a computational sense …
(Be warned: There are one or two simplifications and liberties with precision in what follows; it’s well-intentioned but may upset the purist.)
Well, actually, even that isn’t simple and there’s no absolute agreement on what a good definition would be. (We’ve seen previously that mathematicians and computer scientists don’t always see eye-to-eye.) It’s cheating a bit but it’s probably easier to give examples and this should work well enough for us. At least in the context of computing, these are all valid problems:
- Calculate 2 x 4 + 9 – 3
- If 5 – x = 2 what’s x?
- Find the largest from 5, 7, 1, 4, 8, 5, 2, 4, 8, 5, 2, 6, 7, 7, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 6, 7, 7, 6, 5, 4
- Sort 25, 44, 66, 72, 12, 45, 56, 90, 45, 69, 11, 10, 12, 42, 88 into ascending order
- Arrange 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 into a magic square
- What’s the best way to get to Paris?
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7 Comments | tags: Algorithms, Complexity, Complexity classes, Computational complexity, Easy and hard problems, Math, NP, NP-complete, P, Problem solving, Travelling Salesman Problem, TSP | posted in Academia, Algorithms, Computer Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Programming
Turing's Radiator 