intrust

Once Hollerith’s cards were punched with the information from the enumerator’s schedules, what did the tabulating machines do with them? That’s simple – they calculated. They counted. They aggregated the figures the census bureau needed to report to congress. But what does that mean? Today we would say that Hollerith wrote a program that added up all the values of some attribute in a certain column or row: Hollerith and his assistants performed a primitive variation of what we, today, call hard-wiring. When one task was finished they had to get down on all fours and open up the machines and rebuild them for the next job, but call it what you may, they were programming.

And in their “programs” W3 data, as perceived and filtered by the enumerators, was run against a set of instructions. The individual cards representing the populace became the variables, the XYZ’s of a mathematical problem. W3 meets logic.

Now, when one thinks logically and perhaps writes down some mathematics or syllogisms on a piece of paper, one creates W3, sure, but there are many people who believe that mathematics and logic are different from other W3 data; that numbers and logic would exist even if we humans were not around to think about them and write them down: They don’t need W2 to get created and they don’t need W3 to keep them alive. Well, that would also be true for most W1 stuff like Mount Everest and the Amazon River, even if they would miss out on having such nice names. As Richard Feynman was fond of saying, “nature doesn’t care what anyone thinks”. But mathematics and logic, as some people believe, would be around even if there was no W1. They would exist a priori to all three worlds.

Mathematics and logic, free from any dependence on sense perception, are the algorithms of our computer programs and corporal machines. This might help to explain the self-assured attitude of the IT work force. Their stock and trade are a priori truths.

// posted by Greg FitzPatrick @ 14:26