/m/e/t/a/ on Thu, 17 Sep 1998 02:48:37 +0100


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Syndicate: replaced


	"I was a high school student when I first heard about computers
from the late George Forsythe, then a professor of mathematics at Stanford.
In his guest lecture to our math class he emphasised two things. One was
the notion that the purpose of computing was to do anything that people
could figure out how to mechanize. Thus, he pointed out, computing would
inexorably make inroads on one new domain after another, as we came to
recognize that an activity that had seemed to require ever-fresh insights
and mental imagery could be replaced by an ingenious and subtly worked-out
collection of rules, the execution of which would then be a form of
glorified drudgery carried out at the speed of light."