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European Visions for the Knowledge Age |
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European Visions for the Knowledge Age
A Quest for New Horizons in
the Information Society
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- Paul T Kidd (Ed)
- ISBN 978-1-901864-08-3 (Paperback)
- Price: See buy
on-line link
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- Chapter 17
- The World as Computer
- Walter Van de Velde
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- Introduction
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- "Restart the world. Click
here." So reads an advertisement for broadband access by
a leading Italian internet access provider. This suggests nothing
less than that the world is a computer. It illustrates the basic
argument of this chapter: not only is the computational perspective
increasingly influencing the jargon of science and technology,
but also publicity aimed at the general public. In addition the
status of the computational perspective is changing. Initially
a research instrument (like a notebook or a calculator), it has
become an epistemological tool (modelling nature as if it is
computation) and is taking on ontological ambitions (implying
that nature is computational). This ontological stance is a cornerstone
for the convergence among the nanosciences, the biological sciences,
the information sciences and the cognitive sciences, commonly
referred to as NBIC. The hypothesis that binds these together
is, essentially, a computational one. If the basic building blocks
of world, atoms, cells, neurones, and so on, can be understood
as computational elements, then they can be made interchangeable
and interoperable.
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- This convergence is, however,
only a first episode in which humankind is learning the engineering
skills to turn this convergence into material practice. This
focuses on the smallest things, which, though still dauntingly
complex, are easier to deal with in the reductionist scientific
tradition. But these techniques will eventually produce their
effects at the scale of everyday life experiences. Everything
becomes programmable through such things as smart materials,
brain-machine coupling, community technologies and global sensor
networks. In contemporary research the computational approach
is preparing for the final move, namely to absorb everything:
small or large, living or not, natural or artificial. It aims
to become metaphysics: a theory of life, the universe, and everything
else.
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- These developments raise many
questions. One is particularly worrying: is computer science
ready to assume this role that is, willingly or not, bestowed
on it? The answer is a clear no, which can be interpreted both
as a warning against going along without reflection, and as an
opportunity for a radical and long overdue re-invention of computer
science.
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