Pinned
The story of computing is the story of humanity: this is a story of ambition, invention, creativity, vision, avarice, power, and serendipity, powered by a refusal to accept the limits of our bodies and our minds.
Grady Booch
892 posts
Grady Booch
@Grady_Booch
scientist, storyteller, philosopher
- The story of computing is written in its artifacts, in the organizations in which they were forged, and expecially in the people who shaped them. To inform my understanding of the stories of computing, I have studied several thousand books, here organized according the places
- Sentience is an exquisite consequence of the laws of physics, and the embodied mind of organisms shaped by millions of years of evolution is the remarkable product of a billions upon billions of failed experiments and dead ends and strange loops. It is a mark of profound hubris
- We live in a world exquisitely dependent on computing, with artifacts that range from the profoundly simple to the staggeringly complex. Nonetheless, its fundamental concepts are still within the grasp of every person touched by its possibilities. Abstraction, algorithms,
- There is a vast difference in the architecture of a software-intensive system whose output must always be accurate and precise versus one whose output can just be good enough.
- There was a time when computers were human. Over the years we built computers we could walk inside; now we carry them with us or even inside us. Computational thinking is a way by which we may understand and control the cosmos and ourselves. We currently live in a world with
- Many of computing's significant artifacts may be found in museums around the world, a testament to the reality that the fabric of computing has draped itself across all of civilization. Following the link herein, you’ll find my collection of many of these places.
- Mythology is filled with stories of machines that served as companions, as helpmates, as servants, as gods. Now, we build them from sand and animate them with lightning. Our bodies may die, but the digital dietrius we create in our lifetime lives on. As we slowly, inevitably, and
- Sentience is an exquisite yet rare consequence of the laws of physics. Across the fullness of time, it is only in the past two or three generations that computers were no longer just human; now they have woven themselves into the interstitial spaces of civilization, serving to
