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Thank you very much for this. I originally learned about the Von Neumann / CA connection here on HN, but never really found a lot of sources for it. I've been
by ColanR 7y ago
Thank you very much for this. I originally learned about the Von Neumann / CA connection here on HN, but never really found a lot of sources for it. I've been deeply wanting to learn more. You've posted a lot of awesome sources above - is there anything else you'd care to add, for someone who wants to know as much as possible about what Von Neumann was up to?
- caetris1 7y agoVon Neumann was a friend and colleague of Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory (mathematical theory of communication). Back then, it was a really small world of scientists working in this field. Von Neumann, Turing, and Shannon spent a lot of time complimenting each other's work. Shannon eventually discovered that information encoding/decoding is optimally done as a collection of bits (the name was later coined by John Archibald Wheeler "it from bit"). At some point Shannon recommended to Turing that his machine could be whittled down to only two states. Von Neumann was inspired by Turing's work, which led him to create the Von Neumann architecture. Von Neumann was brilliant but he relied heavily on Shannon and Turing, and vice versa. And to answer your question... Shannon wrote a paper on that very subject out of deep admiration of his friend Von Neumann. https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.bams/1183522376 https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.bams/1183522...
- ColanR 7y agoVery cool. Thank you.