Author: Giuseppe Primiero

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HaPoC Symposium at IACAP-14

It is our pleasure to announce that we will organize a HaPoC symposium during the
IACAP-14 conference.

Since the first HaPoC conference in 2011, the community of people interested in HaPoC is thriving and a large number of different events has been organized. The general spirit of these events is interdisciplinarity and openness towards different fields relevant to HaPoC, guided by a quote by Mike Mahoney that the computer is not one thing but many things and that the same holds true of computing. We were and are strongly convinced that such trans- and interdisciplinarity is necessary if one wants to reflect on a discipline such as computer science with its multidimensional nature.

The current symposium is organized in a similar manner. The programme consists of researchers coming from a diversity of backgrounds, who want to engage with topics relevant to the history and philosophy of computing. The meeting will focus on the following questions:

– What are programs, algorithms, machines and how do we understand their languages?
– What is computing/computation?
– What is the science in computer science?

Clearly, these questions can be tackled from a diversity of perspectives. For this reason, one historian, one philosopher and one mathematician/computer scientist are invited to deliver a talk for each of these three fundamental questions.

LIST OF INVITED SPEAKERS, TITLES AND ABSTRACTS

—
Barry Cooper (University of Leeds)
Computing the Rainbow

To what extent is philosophy computation? Is computation necessarily precise and semantically destructive? In this talk we tour various aspects of computation: Embodiment; representation; description and definition; and the roles and means of observation and control. We ask: Does computation exist without embodiment? Or without representation? What in broad terms is the relationship between description, logic and computation? And to what extent does our everyday use of natural language qualify as computation, or is it something else? How does the mathematics of information relate to this question? Can one, and should one, disentangle the computational
roles of logic and information? And is the concept of causality clarified in such a computational setting? We also look at how our attempts at answers play out in relation to the history and theory of familiar computational hosts: Biology; the brain and mentality; economics; the internet and embodiments of the classical Turing model of computation; and in regard to the physical universe itself.

—
Nachum Dershowitz (Tel Aviv University)
What is concurrent computing?

I will describe a model of computation, based on abstract state machines, that incorporates cooperation between components and encompasses a broad variety of contemporary parallel and distributed models.

—
Gonzalo Genova (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, España & Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile)
Intertwining of formal and empirical methods in software engineering

What is the science in computer science? Computer Science is a very broad term that encompasses a plurality of research areas and methods, both in “pure” science and in applied science (i.e. engineering). In particular, empirical methods are not enough to account for all kinds of scientific activity in computing. In this talk I will present a three dimensional categorization of research methods in computing: formal-empirical, science-engineering, machine-human. My final focus is on the due consideration of human factors in software engineering research.

—
Robin Hill (University of Wyoming)
What an Algorithm Is: The Ante-Digital View

An algorithm is a human construct, a finite, abstract, mechanical and imperative control structure. Although its correspondence with the Turing Machine, also a finite abstract mechanical control structure, is widely accepted among theorists, a focus on the intuitive view reveals a full-blown conceptual object that has its own characteristics, such as the imperative form, that have no direct analogy in formal objects. Programs are the articulations of algorithms in a particular medium. The other traditional areas of philosophy―ethics, epistemology, and other questions of metaphysics―can also be applied to computer science in ways outside of the formal that remain largely unexplored, promising a greater understanding and appreciation of computation and its place.

—
Simone Martini (University of Bologna)
Ipsa forma est substantia. Language(s) as a foundation for computer science

Computer science shares with other disciplines concepts and methods for problem solving. Its distinctive contribution to these common methodologies is the language for doing them. What we (often dismissively)
call programming languages are powerful tools for the modeling of reality which scale at several abstraction levels. I will argue that this is one of the more pervasive contributions of computer science, and that
we can talk of programs, algorithms, and machines only at this linguistic level.

—
Wilfried Sieg (Carnegie Mellon)
What is the concept of computation?

The classical approach to the effective calculability of number theoretic functions led, through Gödel and Church, to a notion of computability in formal calculi and then to metamathematical absoluteness theorems. The classical approach to the mechanical decidability of problems concerning syntactic configurations led, through Turing and Post, to a notion of computability in formal calculi and then to metamathematical representation theorems. The crucial differences between the calculi used for effective calculability, respectively mechanical decidability are the background to formulating an abstract concept of a computable dynamical system. This concept articulates finiteness and locality conditions that are satisfied by the standard concrete notion of computation. In addition, a representation theorem can be established: the computations of any concrete system falling under the abstract concept can be simulated by a Turing machine.

—
Ray Turner (University of Essex)
The design and construction of computational artefacts

Computer scientists construct things. They construct software, computers, tablets, embedded systems, chips, type inference frameworks, natural language systems, compilers and interpreters etc. These are the technical artefacts of computer science, computational artefacts. A central activity of the subject concerns their specification, design and construction. On the face of it this is a design activity. But saying this leaves many questions unanswered. What is a good design? What are the methodologies employed in getting from function to structure? How do we evaluate them? Are some computational artefacts abstract and some physical? What is the role of mathematics in the process? What is correctness for computational artefacts? Is the latter mathematical or empirical in nature? What roles do model/theory construction and experimentation play in the activity? Do these roles justify the word science in its title?

—
Mate Szabo (Carnegie Mellon)
Turing’s Machines and Post’s Canonical Forms.

In 1936 Alan Turing and Emil Post independently introduced strikingly similar models of computation. Although usually Turing’s machines are used as the mathematical model of computation, in most cases they are represented as Post’s Canonical Forms. Indeed, Turing in his (1950) adopted Post’s formulation of Turing machines from his (1947) and described the notion of “logical computing machines” as a notion which was introduced by “Post (1936) and the author (1936).” The prevalent view interprets the events of 1936 as a surprising coincidence, but Davis & Sieg explain it in their (2014) as a result of a deep conceptual confluence. In my talk I will analyze this conceptual confluence on the one hand, and the different approaches Turing and Post took to the intuitive notion of computability or finite combinatory processes on the other.

Davis, Martin and Wilfried Sieg. 2014. “Conceptual Confluence in 1936: Post & Turing.” (Forthcoming) In Thomas Strahm and Giovanni Sommaruga (eds) Turing Centenary Volume. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Post, Emil. 1936. “Finite Combinatory Processes – Formulation 1.” The Journal of Symbolic Logic 1, no. 3: 103-105.

Post, Emil. 1947. “Recursive Unsolvability of a Problem of Thue.” The Journal of Symbolic Logic 12, no. 1: 1-11.

Turing, Alan. 1936. “On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, Vol. 42: 230-265.

Turing, Alan. 1950. “The Word Problem in Semi-Groups With Cancellation.” The Annals of Mathematics, Series 2, Vol. 52, no. 2: 491-505.

—
Ksenia Tatarchenko (Columbia University)
Computing and the Sands of Time: from al-Khwarazm to Los Alamos.

The history of computer science was born in two famous deserts: the cradle of the atomic bomb became the first official site for memory construction in computing; and Urgench – the administrative center of the Khoresmskaia oblast’ in Uzbek SSR – a remote region known as a birth place of the medieval astronomer and mathematician Al Khwarizmi was chosen as the “eternal return” destination for all information technology specialists. While the Soviet-American detente provided a unique context that allowed for international co-creation of a common heroic origin for a new discipline, computer science, its abrupt end in 1980 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan contributed to the establishment of the separated national narratives that persist in the contemporary English and Russian language historiographies. In this paper I analyze two international gatherings, the 1976 conference on the history of computing hosted by N. Metropolis in Los Alamos, and the 1978 pilgrimage to Urgench organized by D. Knuth and A. Ershov, and trace multiple echoes of these events in discipline consolidation, Cold War scientific networks, and politics of remembering.
—

This event is kindly sponsored by the
Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
and by the
science-and-technology/index.aspSchool of Science and Technology at Middlesex University London (UK)

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Program HaPoP-2 available!

We are happy to announce that the program for the
second international symposium for the history and philosophy of programming, organised as part of the AISB 50th Annual Convention 2014 held at Goldsmiths, University of London, is now available:

Friday, April 4, 2014

Session 1: 11h-13h

11h-11.30h: Martin Loomes, Programming, Theories and Science: A Retrospective Discussion
11.30h-12h: Tomas Petricek What can Programming Language Research Learn from the Philosophy of Science?
12h-12.30h: Graham White, The Elusive Low Level
12.30-13h: Michał Tomasz Godziszewski Computational Hardness of Undecidable Sentences and Algorithmic Learnability

Session 2: 14h-15.30h

14h-14.30h: Mark Priestley, Making a place for programmers
14.30h-15h: Stephanie Mawler, Technosectarianism: Applying Religious Metaphors to Programming
15h-15.30h: John Kadvany, Panini grammar is the earliest known computing language

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2nd CfP: Sixth Workshop on the Philosophy of Information

Submissions are invited for the Sixth Workshop on the Philosophy of Information, which will take place at Duke University, 15th–16th of May 2014.

Deadline: 1st of March

The topic for this year will be Information Access, very broadly construed. This includes social, legal, epistemological, logical and normative issues that are related to the availability, accessibility and control of information, as well as the implications of these considerations to other philosophical problems. Submissions in all areas related to the philosophy of information will, however, be considered.

The workshop consists of a main track and two special panels.

As part of the main track of the workshop, at least 10 slots of 45 minutes are available for contributed talks. Abstracts of 500-1000 words should be submitted no later than the 1st of March to Orlin Vakarelov at o.vakarelov@duke.edu.

Submissions will be evaluated by the programme committee (see below), and acceptance notifications will be issued by the 15th of March 2014.

The special panels are devoted to the topics of Information and Law, and on Information and Policy.

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CfP: Women, Gender and Information and Communication Technologies

Call for Contributions

International Symposium: Women, Gender and Information and Communication Technologies, Paris, 15-16 May 2014

Organized by LabEx EHNE (Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe – Writing a New History of Europe),

Although pioneering studies have contributed in the last few years to highlighting numerous aspects of the gendered construction of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), via analyses concerning women telephone operators, female radio listeners, or even the ENIAC Girls, the place of women and of gender in the history of information and communication technologies remains to be reflected upon and written, whether it is the role and the representation of the two sexes regarding research, conception, utilisation or consumption.

It is hoped that these two days will compare European perspectives on the historical relations that women have maintained with information and communication technologies, since the telegraph. The study days invite transnational and interdisciplinary analyses across the long term, drawing as much upon the history of computer science and ICT as upon the history of work, organisations, consumption, education, media, and gender studies.

In touching upon imaginations, values, figures, models and practices that cut across the history of the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the TV, the internet and digital devices, we hope to explore in particular the manner in which the history of information and communication technologies can enrich gender studies, and conversely the way in which the latter can shed light on studies related to ITC. The aim is to do so via numerous angles of approach (not exclusive of other approaches):

– Female actors of ICT: individual and collective historical figures, inventors, programmers, researchers, professional users, consumers etc.

– The gendered representations of the public actors of ICT and their evolution (discourses, advertising, teaching and education, imagination etc).

– The stakeholders implicated at the heart of ICT, affected by the problematic of gender (European associations, national or transnational collectives etc).

– ITCs as producers of new spaces for the expression of gender.

– The specificity or not of European research in the gendered approach of ITCs in relation to the work carried out in North America.

Papers should be twenty minutes in length and can be delivered in French or English. The organising committee would be particularly interested in proposals integrating a diachronic dimension and those explicitly touching upon a European dimension. Proposals of post-graduate students or early-career researchers are welcome.

Submission

Proposals should be sent to fgtic@iscc.cnrs.fr

They should be one page long, contain a bibliography and if possible a proposed plan. Authors can include a summary of their publications/research and a brief biography in their initial e-mail.

Deadlines

• Deadline for submission of proposals: March 1st 2014

• Notification of acceptance: March 15th 2014

• International Symposium: May 15th and 16th 2014

This information is available on http://genreurope.hypotheses.org/

Organizers

Delphine Diaz (IRICE, Université Paris-Sorbonne, LabEx EHNE)

Valérie Schafer (ISCC, CNRS)

Régis Schlagdenhauffen (LISE, CNAM/CNRS, LabEx EHNE)

Benjamin Thierry (IRICE, Université Paris-Sorbonne)

Program Committee

Gerard Alberts (Universiteit van Amsterdam)

Alec Badenoch (Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Utrecht University)

Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann (LISE, CNAM/CNRS)

Niels Brügger (The Centre for Internet Studies, Aarhus University)

Frédéric Clavert (Université Paris-Sorbonne, IRICE, LabEx EHNE)

Delphine Gardey (Faculté des Sciences de la Société, Université de Genève)

Pascal Griset (Université Paris-Sorbonne, CRHI-IRICE/ISCC, LabEx EHNE)

Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, IUF)

Christophe Lécuyer (Université Pierre et Marie Curie)

Ilana Löwy (Cermes, CNRS, EHESS, Inserm, Paris 5)

Cécile Méadel (CSI, MINES Paris Tech)

Ruth Oldenziel (Eindhoven University of Technology, Senior Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center, Munich)

Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan (HT2S, CNAM)

Fabrice Virgili (IRICE, CNRS, LabEx EHNE)

Conference Secretary

Arielle Haakenstad (Université Paris-Sorbonne, IRICE/ISCC, LabEx EHNE)