>
> > Computers are cultural artifacts too - the use of the English alphabet
> is
> > almost ubiquitous
> > in computing. It is hardwired and encoded, burned into the very heart of
> the
> > device.
>
> It is not. The "very heart of the device" sees only numbers.
Lets discuss this a bit more. The "very heart of the computer" is the device
that makes boolean logic switching possible - the transistor. The transistor
does not see numbers - it sees only whether the base has a signal or not.
At the level of the transistor, there are no numbers, only a valve.
The experience of computation is cultural but computation itself is
> not.
If computations exists outside of human (and therefore, cultural)
experience, it must be some kind of natural phenomenon? Is that
correct?
> Turing Completeness is not a property of English or Swahili any
> more than addition is.
I am not very well acquainted with Turing Completeness, especially
of evolved (as opposed to constructed) languages. Perhaps
you might tell us more about this.
> There is no language that it is impossible to derive identifiers for a
> programming language from (if unicode doesn't contain the alphabet it
> can be phonetically encoded using Hangul). It would be aesthetically
> and politically fascinating if there were.
Non-computational languages have an analog component that computers lack. It
is possible
to derive identifiers, maybe, but how much of the language does that
encompass?
> > On the other hand, India has 500+ recognised languages, out of which
> NASA
> > has a study on ancient Sanskrit - citing it as a promising computing
> > language for knowledge representation in NLP.
>
> Sanskrit is a cultural aterfact and its continued use is in no small
> part religious and political. This does not affect its formal
> qualitites or its suitability for use in the task of knowledge
> representation.
What isn't a cultural artefact, then? Sanskrit is actually just an example
I gave, could have been Aramaic. It is almost never spoken outside of
temples (by priests who don't understand it) in India and some Chinese
universities
where they teach and study it.
> Cultural artefaction is a cultural artefact.
>
hahahaha...okay, what the hell :)
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Received on Fri Jan 11 2008 - 13:51:01 GMT