Founders of the RAS: Charles Babbage Edmunds, Michael
Astronomy & geophysics : the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society,
08/2017, Letnik:
58, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
He designed the first computer, but he failed to build it and upset the prime minister, as Mike Edmunds recounts.
He may have designed the first computer, but he failed to build it and upset the ...prime minister, as Mike Edmunds recounts in his Brief Lives, celebrating the founders and history of the RAS.
The design of computing machines might well be said to have begun in the early 19th century with the stories of two English titans, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.1,2,3,4 However, the practice of ...computing machines had to wait until the 20th century when electromechanical and electronic technologies supplanted the merely mechanical technology of their times. Comparing their creations with that of Alan Turing, who in 1936 created a theoretical computing machine to solve a problem in pure mathematics, is instructive.5 Turing’s machine defined for the first time what it means to be computable but was not intended to lead to real computation. However, within ten years real electronic computers were in use solving real computational tasks. Just as the story of Turing and his work is important, the story of Babbage, Lovelace, and their attempt to solve real computational tasks demonstrates the interplay of ideas and available technology.
Reinventing the eye exam Keane, Pearse; Topol, Eric
The Lancet (British edition),
12/2019, Letnik:
394, Številka:
10215
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The treatment of eye disease has also been technology-driven. Since the 1960s, ophthalmology has pioneered the application of medical lasers, including thermal lasers to prevent blindness in diabetes ...and the use of ultra-short pulsed lasers to shave the cornea and remove the need for spectacles. In 2018, the first autonomous clinical AI system was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, allowing for automated screening of retinal photographs for diabetic retinopathy, and has made its way to grocery stores in the USA. Algorithms, with or without the use of smartphone cameras, are in early-stage development for the diagnosis of glaucoma, certain paediatric eye conditions, congenital cataracts, retinopathy of newborns, and to assess patient suitability for corneal refractive surgery.
Charles Babbage's library Davenhall, Clive
Astronomy & geophysics : the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society,
12/2017, Letnik:
58, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
I enjoyed Mike Edmunds' article on RAS founder Charles Babbage and thought that the following snippet might be of interest as a postscript. The Crawford Collection at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh ...is well known as one of the largest and most important collections of historical astronomical books and manuscripts. What is less well known is that Babbage's library forms the core of this collection.
Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital computer. It is essentially distinguished from all prior and analog computers by the transcription of ...the ‘mechanical notation’, the separation of the mnemonic ‘store’ from the cybernetic ‘mill’, and the infinite miniaturization of its component parts. This substitution of finite space for an accelerating singularity of time creates the essential rupture of the digital, in which a singular calculation of mechanical force stands opposed to the universal totality of space. Babbage’s criticism of Christian doctrine to preserve the mathematical consistency of mechanics and computing would result in the collapse of the Christian Trinity into a digital theology. This Arian subordinate difference of the Son to the Father would then be infinitely transcribed in a technical contradiction that would threaten to annul the metaphysical ground of any machine. Against digital and postdigital theologies alike, this rupture can only be repaired by a dialectical analysis of the digital into a hyperdigital grammar, which is created by Christ the Logos in a trinitarian ontology of computers. Digital computers can thus be vindicated from theological suspicion as incarnationally accelerated calculators of the sacraments, or ‘sacramental engines’ of the digital age.
Purpose
During the first quarter of the twentieth century in Russia rapidly developed management thought, generated by many reasons, including socio-economic and political transformations, the ...results of scientific and practical activities of domestic and foreign experts in management. The purpose of this paper is, first, to acquaint readers with some of factors of the development of the history of Russian Management Thought in nineteenth century and at the beginning of twentieth century and, second, to present the most striking results of the formation of the History of Soviet Management Thought (SMT) in post-revolutionary Russia in the form of the movement of the so-called “The scientific organization of labor” (SOL), including “The scientific organization of managerial labor” (or SOML).
Design/methodology/approach
The review and causal analysis of the process of formation of the SMT and historiography of the SMT, a brief description of the institutions of SOL and SOMT and a comparative analysis of little-known works of some Russian authors on management topics of nineteenth century are chosen as research methods.
Findings
The paper emphasizes the action of objective
historical inertia
(or “non-Markoviness”) of the process of development of managerial thought, manifested, on the one hand, in the stable action of some management paradigms but, on the other hand, in identifying paradigmatic anomalies, in identifying the need for constant development of managerial thought, in the development of sought-after ideas and concepts of management, and even in the institutionalization of applied scientific research in the field of management throughout the country (in the form of SOL and SOML).
Originality/value
The paper attempts to attract the attention of researchers to the little-known Russian and Soviet authors and their little-known works in the field of management thought.
"Control," Franklin argues, "should be understood as the logical basis of a worldview that imbricates literal practices of computation, the new organization and infrastructural concepts these ...practices facilitate, and metaphors derived from the electronic digital computer and its processes with a system of value production that can produce profit only by exploiting and dispossessing human life" (p. xviii). ...in a fascinating chapter centered on cybernetics and game theory, Franklin shows how concepts initially developed to describe machines and human-machine interactions became generalized and universalized as metaphors for people and society that ultimately buttressed neoliberal economy theories espoused by writers such as Friedrich Hayek. Often challenging but always insightful, Franklin's Control offers a valuable contribution to the growing literature on cybernetics and its connections to the power dynamics of a digital world.
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