3 ms·
edit: I was wrong, see below. - - - - I have since misplaced it, but there's a book on the history of the computer wherein a conversation with Babbage was quo
by carapace 5y ago
edit: I was wrong, see below.
- - - -
I have since misplaced it, but there's a book on the history of the computer wherein a conversation with Babbage was quoted. He was asked something like, "So the engine is the perfection of the executive?", and he agreed.
That phrase, "the perfection of the executive", has stayed with me.
The "executive" in this sense means the "part of government that enforces law, and has responsibility for the governance of a state." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government)
In other words control. Babbage and his interlocutor saw the computer as the perfection of control in the political sense, and I think we're seeing that unfold today before our eyes.
- cafard 5y agoHe was -- or rather his correspondent was--speaking of mathematics: """ In 1840 I received from my friend M. Plana a letter pressing me strongly to visit Turin at the then approaching meeting of Italian philosophers. In that letter M. Plana stated that he had inquired anxiously of many of my countrymen about the power and mechanism of the Analytical Engine. He remarked that from all the information he could collect the case seemed to stand thus:— “Hitherto the legislative department of our analysis has been all powerful—the executive all feeble. “Your engine seems to give us the same control over the executive which we have hitherto only possessed over the legislative department.” """ Passages From the Life of a Philosopher (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57532/57532-0.txt https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57532/57532-0.txt)
- 1MachineElf 5y agoThat extra historical context provides some fascinating depth to setting of The Difference Engine (1990).
- carapace 5y agoAh! Thank you for clearing that up. Cheers!