Author: Kristopher D'Alterio

Not much of the information in this reading was new to me, but the analysis of it certainly was. The initial analysis of the development of written language makes a lot of sense to me, though I think he glossed over a more fundamental point, the universality of spoken language. Also, while any alphabet is universal in theory, no language currently used is completely described by its rules and alphabet in any concise way. This is actually an instance of a common theme throughout the reading, where the mechanisms to achieve universality are in place but unused.

I also find it odd that when describing a number of early steps on the way to universality, in each of the categories of numbers, computers, and life-replicators, he seems disappointed that the rest of the jump to universality was not made, even saying that Babbage “should” have made the jump. While I entirely see the point that he “could” have, there seem to be strong implications of a necessity of universality being developed as soon as possible that is never quite justified. There is certainly an advantage to making the jump, but I was never convinced that it is a necessity.

For this assignment (to make a switch that works without using hands) I quickly came upon the idea of using breath, specifically blowing on a piece of tinfoil. Luckily, I found that if a bent a piece of tinfoil at about a right angle and blew on it it would change the angle and then return back to the bent position. After some initial testing that holding the two wire ends and blowing the tinfoil into them would complete the circuit, I built a small frame to hold it all together. I took a piece of cardboard and affixed a section of tinfoil to it, and then bent the tinfoil at a smaller angle so that it was about an inch above the cardboard. I then poked two holes through the cardboard, and pushed the wire ends through these holes so that their ends extended about a half inch past the cardboard.

Personally I quite disliked this reading, largely because as a physics major I have studied electricity before, and felt that the problems he identified showed a lack of of understanding on his part, rather than problems with the theory itself. I have no problem with attempting to explain things in simpler or more clever ways, but his approach in particular actually conveys misinformation. My biggest gripe is very fundamental, and has nothing to do with electron theory. He misrepresents the type of information that physics provides. For instance, he complains that it only answers “how?”, not “why?”. This is not a problem with electron theory it is an intentional and necessary part of physics, the techniques of any natural science are not suited to answer the question “why?”.  At other times he complains that the electron doesn’t seem real because the attributes assigned it by electron theory don’t intuitively seem like attributes of real things, such as a poorly defined position. My problem with this is that intuition is misleading, and lack of well defined positions for anything, not just electrons is one of the most well “proven” theories in physics. I am sure that his eventual description of greenies is useful to anyone who is new to electricity or not mathematically minded, but I had so many issues with his preface that I could not bring myself to appreciate it.