{"id":742,"date":"2013-03-27T22:23:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T22:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=742"},"modified":"2013-03-27T22:23:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T22:23:54","slug":"the-origins-of-the-digital-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=742","title":{"rendered":"The origins of the digital universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just\u00a0finished\u00a0Turing’s Cathedral<\/a> – a fine and stimulating book about the origins of the computer, the interlinked history of the first computers and nuclear bombs, the role of John von Neumann in all that, the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, and much more. It is a very thoroughly\u00a0researched\u00a0volume based on archival materials, interviews, etc. Actually, if I have one complaint it is that it is too\u00a0scrupulous\u00a0in presenting the background of all primary, secondary and tertiary characters in the story of the computer and in documenting the development of the various buildings at the IAS. For that reason I found the first part of the book a bit tedious. But the later chapters in which the author allows his own ideas about the digital universe to roam more freely are truly inspired and inspiring. It was also quite fascinating to learn that one of the first uses of the digital computer, apart from calculating nuclear fusion processes and trying to predict the weather, has been to run what would now be called agent-based modeling (by Nils Baricelli<\/a>). Here is my\u00a0favorite\u00a0passage from the book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

‘Books are strings of code. But they have mysterious properties – like strings of DNA. Somehow the author captures a fragment of the universe, unravels it into a one-dimensional sequence, squeezes it through a keyhole, and hopes that a three-dimensional \u00a0vision emerges in the reader’s mind. The translation is never exact.’<\/em> (p.312<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just\u00a0finished\u00a0Turing’s Cathedral – a fine and stimulating book about the origins of the computer, the interlinked history of the first computers and nuclear bombs, the role of John von Neumann in all that, the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, and much more. It is a very thoroughly\u00a0researched\u00a0volume based on archival materials, interviews, etc. Actually, if I have one complaint it is that it is too\u00a0scrupulous\u00a0in presenting the background of all primary, secondary and tertiary characters in the story of the computer and in documenting the development of the various buildings at the IAS. For that reason I found the first part of the book a bit tedious. But the later chapters in which the author allows his own ideas about the digital universe to roam more freely are truly inspired and inspiring. It was also quite fascinating to learn that one of the first uses of the digital computer, apart from calculating nuclear fusion processes and trying to predict the weather, has been to run what would now be called agent-based modeling (by Nils Baricelli). Here is my\u00a0favorite\u00a0passage from the book: ‘Books are strings of code. But they have mysterious properties – like strings of DNA. Somehow the author captures a fragment of the universe, unravels it into a one-dimensional sequence, squeezes it through a keyhole, and hopes that a three-dimensional \u00a0vision emerges in the reader’s mind. The translation is never exact.’ (p.312)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,99,184,294,361,393,458,657,658,671],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-bY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":492,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=492","url_meta":{"origin":742,"position":0},"title":"Ten things I learned from 'Red Plenty'","date":"July 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Red Plenty is Francis Spufford's semi-fictional book about the efforts to apply economic planning in the Soviet Union during the 50s and 60s. It is a great book and has been already extensively discussed elsewhere. (Don't miss\u00a0Cosma Shalizi's\u00a0post in particular). Here is what I learned from 'Red Plenty': 1. Linear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "economic policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=18","url_meta":{"origin":742,"position":1},"title":"The deterrent effect of the death penalty","date":"October 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Does the death penalty lead to a lower number of homicides? A recent paper by Charles Manski and John Pepper argues that, on the basis of existing US data, we do not know. 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As usual, most of these footnotes result directly from the review process so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academic publishing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":489,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=489","url_meta":{"origin":742,"position":3},"title":"Tit-for-tat no more: new insights into the origin and evolution of cooperation","date":"June 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD)\u00a0is\u00a0the paradigmatic\u00a0scientific model to understand human cooperation. You would think that after\u00a0several decennia of analyzing this\u00a0deceivingly simple game, nothing new can be learned. Not quite. This new paper discovers a whole new class of strategies that provide a unilateral advantage to the players using them in playing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game theory"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":331,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=331","url_meta":{"origin":742,"position":4},"title":"Explanation and the quest for 'significant' relationships. Part I","date":"February 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The ultimate goal of social science is causal explanation*. The\u00a0actual goal of most\u00a0academic research is to discover significant relationships between variables. The two goals are supposed to be strongly related - by discovering (the) significant effects of exogenous (independent) variables, one\u00a0accounts for\u00a0the outcome of interest.\u00a0In fact, the working assumption of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=372","url_meta":{"origin":742,"position":5},"title":"Torture and game theory","date":"March 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest issue of Political Research Quarterly has an interesting and important exchange about the use of game theory to understand the effectiveness of torture\u00a0for eliciting truthful information. In this post I summarize the discussion, which is quite instructive for illustrating the prejudices and misunderstandings people have about the role\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game theory"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}