Computer Ethics Historical Notes
Norberto Patrignani
1 / 42 Imhotep, the First Engineer
High priest of the Sun God Ra
Chancellor to the Pharaoh Djoser
Architect of the "steppyramid"
Imhotep (He who comes in peace) Pyramid of Djoser (2700 B.C.) Saqqara, Egypt
2 / 42 Data, Information and Knowledge Communication Revolutions 0
˜ 200.000 100.000 Homo Sapiens biological Language support (WetWare)
3500 B.C. 0 1455 1950
Writing Printing
paper support stone, paper support ... space/time diffusion ... Computer (Networks) silicon support … arithmetic engine communication device 3 / 42 The Dream of a "Reasoning" Machine
4 / 42 Abacus, circa 300 B.C.
Modern abacus
Salamis tablet (originally thought to be a gaming board), used by the Babylonians circa 300 B.C., discovered in 1846
5 / 42 1274: Ramon Lull Ars Magna
• •
Ramon Lull (Raimundo Lulio) (12321315)
Ars Magna: a Logical Device/Method for arriving at True Knowledge ... Logical Machines ... by moving a lever the Propositions would prove themselves to be True or False!
Source: Gardner, Martin. "The Ars Magna of Ramon Lull." In Logic Machines, Diagrams and Boolean Algebra. New York: Dover Publications, 1968 6 / 42 1623: Wilhelm Schickard
• The "Speeding Clock": 1st calculating machine (1623) • A machine for calculating astronomical tables
Wilhelm Schickard (15921635)
Replica of the "Speeding Clock"
7 / 42 1637: Rene' Descartes
Committed to using reason to prove the truth of God "... Regarding logic, its syllogisms and most of its other precepts serve more to explain to others what one already knows, or even, like the art of Lully, to speak without judgment of those things one does not know, than to learn anything new" You must doubt your senses (mind/body split) ... the only thing of which one can be certain is that one is thinking: René Descartes cogito ergo sum (Cartesius) The body is like a machine (15961650) Reality = ideas in the mind (the AI dilemma!)
Source: Descartes, René. Discourses 1, 2, 4, and 5. Discourse on the Method of Properly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking the Truth in the Sciences (1637). Translated from the French by F. E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968 8 / 42 1642: Blaise Pascal
At the age of 19 built the first arithmetical machine, a digital calculator (to help his father with his work collecting taxes); 50 prototypes produced Known for Theory of Probabilities (principles designed after a correspondence with Fermat in 1650) Pascal claimed to prove that belief in God is rational with the following: Blaise Pascal "If God does not exist, (16231662) one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing."
The "pascaline" calculator
Source: Pascal, Blaise. "The Wager." Pensées (~1660). Translated with an Introduction by A. J. Krailsheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966 9 / 42 1671: Leibniz Machine A system for Human Knowledge
Binary System Calculus (at the same time of Newton!) A system to collate all human knowledge All reasoning and discovery = A combination of basic elements Gottfried W. Leibniz such as numbers, letters, (1646 1716) sounds and colors (inspired by Lull) Mathematics is the language of nature Everything can be understood through numbers (Pythagoras) Universe = a clock without maintenance and support
"The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right" Leibniz Source: (1951), Leibniz: Selections, P. P. Wiener (Ed. Trans.), New York: Scribner, p. 51
Source: "Dissertatio de arte combinatoria", 1666; "Leibniz: A Biography", E.J.Aiton, Hilger (UK), 1985 10 / 42 1714: Leibniz The ideas of his youth never left him
"... I should venture to add that if I had been less distracted, or if I were younger or had talented young men to help me, I should still hope to create a kind of spécieuse générale, in which all truths of reason would be reduced to a kind of calculus. At the same time this could be a kind of universal language ..."
Gottfried Leibniz, 1714 (2 years before his death)
Source: Quoted in Rutherford, D. (1995) “Philosophy and Language in Leibniz” in The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, N. Jolley (Ed.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, p. 239 11 / 42 1726: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
JonathanSwift (16671745)
"the engine"
Jonathan Swift’s satirical classic Gulliver’s Travels (1726) parodied the mechanical conception of invention advanced by Llull and Leibniz. In the fictional city of Lagado, the protagonist encounters a device known as "the engine" which is intended by its inventor to enable anyone to "... write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study"
Source: Jonathan Swift (1899) Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, London, George Bell and Sons, pp. 191192. 12 / 42 1801: Joseph Jacquard
Joseph Marie Jacquard (17521834) 1801: First "punchedcards" machine Jacquard's loom
13 / 42 1814: The Universe's Formula
… Despite 6,022 x 1023 (Avogadro's constant, 1811) Number of molecules in a mole! Laplace had strong influence on Reductionist Approach of modern science!
Pierre Simon Laplace (17491827)
"Une intelligence qui, pour un instant donné, connaîtrait toutes les forces dont la nature est animée et la situation respective des êtres qui la composent, si d'ailleurs elle était assez vaste pour soumettre ces données à l'analyse, embrasserait dans la même formule les mouvements des plus grands corps de l'univers et ceux du plus léger atome: rien ne serait incertain pour elle, et l'avenir, comme le passé, serait présent à ses yeux"
Source: PierreSimon Laplace, "Essai philosophique sur les probabilités", 1814 14 / 42 1820: Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar
1820: Arithmometer Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (France, 17851870)
15 / 42 1831: Torino!
16 / 42 1831: Calendario Meccanico Universale
Giovanni Plana (17811864)
Calendario Meccanico Universale, 18311835, Cappella dei Mercanti, Via Garibaldi 25, Torino Studio dei 3 studenti del Politecnico di Torino: Cappato Roberto, Spano Sergio, Nasiri Meysam http://www.cappelladeimercanti.it/calendariouniversale/
Composto da memorie a tamburo, a disco e nastro, con mezzi di accesso e di lettura azionati da ruote dentate, catene e viti, è un vero e proprio computer, (racchiude al suo interno circa 46 mila dati), permette scegliendo un giorno, un mese e un anno qualunque (dall'anno 1 all'anno 4000) di identificare, il giorno della settimana corrispondente, le festività, i cicli lunari e le maree relativi a quell'anno ... concilia giorni, settimane, mesi, anni, secoli, lune, solstizi, equinozi e festività fisse e mobili, riconosce sia il calendario giuliano, che quello gregoriano introdotto nel 1582 cancellando dieci giorni...
17 / 42 1834: The Analytical Engine
Charles Babbage (London, England, 1791 1871)
Difference Engine (replica), London Science Museum
Computer Latin origin: "cumputare" (that is, "togethercut", "compare and extract a result")
18 / 42 1842: Luigi Federico Menabrea
Giovanni Plana Luigi Federico Menabrea (1781 1864) (18091896)
1840, Torino II Congresso Scienziati Italiani invita Charles Babbage
19 / 42 1843: The 1st Programmer in History
Ada Byron (1815 1852) (daughter Anne Isabella Milbanke George Gordon Byron) Distinction between operations (Instructions) and objects operated upon (Data), the objects may not only be numbers, but anything that may be represented by numbers
Poetical Science: ability by using imagination and metaphor to evaluate accurately a concept or an idea. Babbage was focused on number crunching She developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating
Source: Ada Byron, Notes by the Translator on L. F. Menabrea's Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage. 1842. 20 / 42 1854: George Boole
- New ideas on the Calculus of Variations Published as an outsider in: "An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities", The Cambridge Mathematical Journal, 1854 "We ought no longer to associate Logic and George Boole Metaphysics, but Logic and Mathematics" (18151864) The Analytical Engine made use of Operations and Objects of Operations and that it could be a completely general machine if both were written in the same language (Ada Lovelace) Boole: Mathematizing logic would translate Operations (logic) and Objects of Operations (mathematical objects for example) into the same language Boole: Representing logical statements (like syllogisms and other things with sets of AND, OR, and NOTs) as mathematical statements that were TRUE or FALSE, and then represent this outcome as ON or OFF, 1 or 0 (the binary system!) Boolean algebra = algebra on logic statements (not numbers); TRUE & FALSE could represent functions of switches in electronic circuits (Claude Shannon)
Source: "An investigation on the laws of thought", G.Boole, Walton and Maberly, London, 1854 21 / 42 1878: Ramon Silvestre Verea Garcia
Ramón Silvestre Verea García 1878: Verea's Multiplying Machine (18331899)
22 / 42 1878: Christopher Latham Sholes
ChristopherChristopher Latham Sholes Latham Sholes (USA, 1819 - 1890) (18191890)
1878: QWERTY keyboard
23 / 42 1890: Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith 1890: Tabulating Machine (18601929) Punched cards used to record census data
24 / 42 1896: Human Computing
Annie Cannon Antonia Maury Henrietta Leavitt (18631941) (18661952) (18681921)
The Glass Universe, How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
Dava Sobel, PenguinRandomHouse, 2016
25 / 42 1908: Camillo Olivetti
Camillo Olivetti (18681943)
Graduated in 1891 at Politecnico di Torino (with prof. Galileo Ferraris) 1908: Olivetti founded in Ivrea
26 / 42 1916: Thomas J. Watson
Thomas J.Watson (18741956) 1916: Computing Tabulating Recording Corp. (CTR) listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916 1924: CTR Corp. became IBM 1st General Manager: Thomas J.Watson
27 / 42 1937: Turing Machine
Alan Turing (19121954)
www.bookliners.com
Source: Turing A., "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" from Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, (Ser. 2, Vol. 42, 1937) 28 / 42 1939: HP
Bill Hewlett (19132001) David Packard (19121996) 1939: HP founded
29 / 42 1941: Konrad Zuse
"Z3" (replica), Deutsches Museum, Munich Konrad Zuse (19101995) 1941: "Z3", 1st working, programmable computer 2,000 relays, clock 10 Hz, word length 22 bits Z3 was destroyed in 1944 during bombing of Berlin
30 / 42 1942, "System Engineer"
The term Systems Engineering dates back to Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1940s with major applications of Systems Engineering during World War II
1942: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey General view from entrance road I
Source: GottschoSchleisner, Inc./Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C., call no. LCG612 41943 31 / 42 1942: "digital"
Digi
Robert Stibitz (19041995)
Stibitz Model K, Bell Labs, 1939 Relay Binary Adder basic circuitry of the Bell Model 1 Relay Calacultor ("Complex Number Calculator"
32 / 42 1943: ENIAC
1943, US Army Ballistic Research Lab commissioned ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer) Commissioned to University of Pennsylvania
Source: Edwards, Paul. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997 33 / 42 1943: Howard Aiken
Howard Aiken (19001973) 1943: January, Mark I IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), Harvard University
34 / 42 1945, ENIAC's First 6 Programmers
U.S.Army Photo Left: Jean Bartik, Right: Frances Spence
Women in Technology International, 1997 WITI Hall of Fame Award 35 / 42 Norbert Wiener & John Von Neumann
Norbert Wiener John Von Neumann (18941964) (19031957)
"I do not expect to publish "... I would prefer not to join any future work of mine the Board which may do damage (of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists), in the hands of since I have ... avoided irresponsible militarists..." all participation in public activities, which are not of a "A Scientist Rebels" purely technical nature" Atlantic Monthly, January, 1947 John Von Neumann to Norman Cousins (Library of Congress archives) May 22, 1946
Source: Heims, S.J. "John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, from mathematics to the technologies of life and death", MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980 36 / 42 1945: Von Neumann Architecture
John Von Neumann (Budapest, 1903 Washington, USA, 1957) 1944: EDVAC University of Pennsylvania
Also with contributions by Herman Goldstine, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, Arthur Burks
Source: "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC", J.V.Neumann Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1945 37 / 42 1945: Vannevar Bush's MEMEX
Vannevar Bush (18901974)
A kind of "personal knowledge management system" an hypotetical "hypertext" system in which people could store all their books, records, communications, etc. and then that could be used for retrieving such information... (the Web 50 years before!)
Source: Bush V. (1945), "As we may think", The Atlantic, July 1945 38 / 42 1947: "bit" (binary digit) term 1952: "software" term
John Tukey (19152000)
Bell Labs, Internal Memo, 9 January 1947
39 / 42 1947: "flowchart"
IAS, 1952, Alan Richards, photographer Julian Bigelow (19132003)
Herman Goldstine (19132004) J. Robert Oppenheimer John von Neumann (19041967) (19031957)
Herman Goldstine, Director at Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, 1947 The IAS (Institute for Advanced Study) machine influenced the design of IBM's computers through John von Neumann (who was a consultant to IBM). When von Neumann died in 1957, Herman Goldstine went to IBM Source: https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/3494 40 / 42 1947: Transistor
2019: 10 nm
Source: 1947: December, Bell Labs First practical pointcontact transistor, William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain 41 / 42 1948 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley Transistor Invention Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956 at the Murray Hill, New Jersey Bell Telephone Laboratory
Source: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102618866 42 / 42