I spent most of my working life in a computer development environment. I have watched important software while it was still an idea and later in its development. I did a lot of testing of new software too. I can read code — not very well now but I used to be able to read and understand it pretty well. Who even knows what languages are being used now?
What I have never understood is why computers work. Although I’ve helped write software, written about software, written many volumes of books about computing and software, I really don’t know why it works.
You write a program and generate it. You run it. You rewrite it until it works. After which you write it again, run it again, and keep trying until you get it right. All of which I understand — but that doesn’t explain WHY it works.
Why does software make computers work? Not how. WHY?
Why should those numbers — 1s and 0s — with letters and codes make a computer do anything? It’s just text. Why do computers obey code?
British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages known as Clarke’s Three Laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.
1 – When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2 – The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible
3 – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I’m voting for number three because computers are magic. We make them work, make them do just about anything and I’m sure much more is coming. Yet in the final analysis, we enter some words and numbers into a computer and for its own reasons, it obeys us. Or maybe not, but that’s just a glitch. And in essence, we don’t really know why and probably never will.
Anyone familiar with computer development knows that code makes computers function, but in the end, why they respond to code is a lot less clear. Did the Great Computer God descend from his throne in Virtual Space to tell computers to obey human “code” and be able to do all the things it does?
No? If that scenario doesn’t work for you, then what other scenarios work? Why should any code take a thing that would otherwise be a paperweight become the magic that runs our world?
Just another little something to think about.
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Categories: #Photography, Anecdote, Computers, Computers, Magic, Software, Technology
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Boolean logic makes computers work, allowing them to evaluate the difference between two numbers or variables.
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But WHY? I know all the numbers make it work, but why do computers respond to that?
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Every computer is built out of components and theircharge changes from a zero to a one depending on the signal they receive. Logic circuits include such devices as multiplexers, registers, arithmetic logic units (ALUs), and computer memory, all the way up through complete microprocessors, which may contain more than 100 million logic gates. A logic gate accepts inputs and then outputs a result based on their state. The seven fundamental basic logic gates AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR usually have two or more inputs and a single output. A truth table tells you how the logic is examined specifically in connection with Boolean algebra.
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I’ve long been an admirer of Arthur C Clarke, ever since reading his SF books in my teens. I particularly like his second law 🙂
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I favor #3, but #2 is my next favorite.
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When I think of computers and Arthur C Clarke I think of his best known work, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I recall how the computer took over. Fiction?
There is so much in the modern world and especially computers that I must attribute to magic. Some things are too complex for my brain to consider them further.
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I had to be VERY stoned to enjoy 2001. I tried watching it unstoned and it didn’t make any sense. My brain had to be in an alternate universe. My son agrees. Straight doesn’t work with that one. Hey, the market tanked today. I wonder why? Guess we have to watch the news.
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“Wall Street stocks fall as markets weighs strong wage data” The billionaires can get richer but god forbid the workers from making any more.
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The rich might not become even richer? Holy moly!
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They’ll find a way to get richer. Raise prices and blame Dems.
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apparently, I’m stuck in the magic phase of tech
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Me too. It really IS magic — we just THINK we know why it works, but we don’t.
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The problem is that electrons, and holes (empty spots for electrons to fall into) in semiconductors are too far removed from the daily experience of our senses.
Mechanical metaphors are easier to experience as containing an answer to the question of “Why?”
The how and why of an old-fashioned player piano is easier to analogize. First to the “how.” The foot pedals are connected to a vacuum pump. A vacuum pump is a plunger that pushed air out of a tube and has a back flap that stops the air from coming back in. Once you have a vacuum chamber emptied out, you can drive the machine.
To simplify: Air is sucked through the holes in the paper piano roll. The position of a hole determines which piano key is pulled down.
The music plays because the composer of the music punched holes in a piece of paper.
The description of the piano is the “how”. The “why” is in the imagination of the composer of the music. He can imagine a song.
The confusion starts to happen when the composer asks for too much help and too many hands. He has an intuitive feel for “why”. And less understanding when he commits the music to musical notation on paper. Then less understanding when he asks an assistant to punch holes in a piano roll. The assistant hires someone to make the vacuum pumps, the piano keys and hammers etc. The composer may not know how to make a piano. It’s possible that many assistants do not know the “why” of the composer when they make different components. The makers of the strings, of the hammers, of the wood container etc. may only know “how” to do their particular specialty. If there are steel strings (or whatever metal), that requires an assistant who know “how” to make steel etc.
The circuits in a computer are the assistants. They know how to do things and “how” to communicate with the other assistants.
Assistants may not know the overall picture at once. When the composer causes the music to be made, he may not understand how any of the assistants can screw up, individually or in combination. The vacuum pump in an improved model might suck in a mosquito into the piano roll and change the song. A hammer might bend and hit the wrong note. A string could break off and fly into a mini-tornado created by the latest up-date of the vacuum pump by the pump-maker assistant. The composer doesn’t know “why” his music is wrong. If the steel workers or furniture makers go on strike, he may not know “why”.
“Why”: reason, cause, purpose.
Reason: aesthetics of the composer. Cause: the will of the composer. Purpose…
Ut oh. A new question for you: “What is the purpose?”
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I get the piano, but everything about the piano exists to make music. All you have to do is create a vacuum tube to blow through the hole and voila, the keys do what they were intended do: make sound by moving the hammer to the right string. Assuming the piano isn’t broken and is more or less in tune, music plays.
On the other hand, the computer has no music — or inherent functions. The piano is playable even if you don’t have the punctured paper and vacuum tubes. That’s the whole point of piano-ness.
The computer is just a lump. There’s no reason why the computer should pay attention to code but it does. It’s magic, but we know the spells. The reason is people. Unless the computer has its own secret reasons and perhaps some of its own spells.
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The point is “What is a machine?” In the context you asked, there is no “why” for a machine but only a “how.” There are generalized biological machines that have no “why” like a mitochondria. DNA and genes themselves like computer code have no “why”. They evolved to have new functions as conditions required it. But they are biological machines. To have a “why” or motive, there must also be an independent soul also that is outside the machine whether the machine is chemical, mechanical, or bio-chemical. “Why” do we do things? Some of it is instinct and the dictates of our biological machines ruled by the laws of physics and chemistry — that part has no free will. Our personhood identity which we call we is not a machine. We are not all machine. Part of us says to ourselves “I am not a machine”.
The computer is not magic. It’s basic template is circuits that do these basic functions: And, Or, Not, NAND and NOR. It is a purely physical function without a will. The computer doesn’t “pay attention” to code. It does math with the code that it inputs. The computerness is the basic instructions it starts with on how to load instructions. The basic loading instructions for a biological system is the DNA.
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My mother used to talk to her plants. She said they grow better if you talk to them. I’ll go with magic because the rest of that makes little sense to me. That may be because I’ve been dizzy all day — my blood pressure is trying to descend to zero. I think I need some medication changes. That would mean actually calling and making an appointment. I’m too tired — and far too dizzy — to deal with it. Maybe it will make sense tomorrow.
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I’m sorry. Take care of yourself. I wish you good magic.
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The amazing thing is that my 14 year old grandson is writing computer programs!
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Isn’t it great? The things the young folks can do is wonderful. Ask him if you knows not how, but WHY the code works. I’d be interested to hear his response.
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I will. He has been learning coding since he was 7.
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