Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Binder, Jeffrey M.
Titre(s) : Language and the rise of the algorithm [Texte imprimé] / Jeffrey M. Binder
Publication : Chicago : The university of Chicago press, copyright 2022
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (321 p.) : ill. ; 24 cm
Note(s) : Bibliogr. p. 275-309
A wide-ranging history of the intellectual developments that produced the modern idea
of the algorithm. Bringing together the histories of mathematics, computer science,
and linguistic thought, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm reveals how recent
developments in artificial intelligence are reopening an issue that troubled mathematicians
long before the computer age. How do you draw the line between computational rules
and the complexities of making systems comprehensible to people? Here Jeffrey M. Binder
offers a compelling tour of four visions of universal computation that addressed this
issue in very different ways: G. W. Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator; a universal algebra
scheme Nicolas de Condorcet designed during the French Revolution; George Boole's
nineteenth-century logic system; and the early programming language ALGOL, whose name
is short for algorithmic language. These episodes show that symbolic computation has
repeatedly become entangled in debates about the nature of communication. To what
extent can meaning be controlled by individuals, like the values of a and b in algebra,
and to what extent is meaning inevitably social? By attending to this long-neglected
question, we come to see that the modern idea of the algorithm is implicated in a
long history of attempts to maintain a disciplinary boundary separating technical
knowledge from the languages people speak day to day. Machine learning, in its increasing
dependence on words, now places this boundary in jeopardy, making its stakes all the
more urgent to understand. The idea of the algorithm is a levee holding back the social
complexity of language, and it is about to break. This book is about the flood that
inspired its construction--Publisher's description
Sujet(s) : Algorithmes -- Histoire
Linguistique mathématique
Indice(s) Dewey :
410.285 (23e éd.) = Linguistique - Informatique appliquée
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 978-0-226-82253-2 (rel.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb473144456
Notice n° :
FRBNF47314445
Table des matières : Symbols and language in the early modern period -- ; The matter out of which thought
is formed -- ; Symbols and the enlightened mind -- ; Language without things -- ;
Mass produced software components -- ; Coda: The age of arbitrariness.
