Epstein Secrets

more complex than they first appear. They are infinite, yet there are different infinities, and they have meaning. The smallpox example above and the Turing numbers we will discover shortly suggest numbers do have meaning independent of culture and language. The next two chapters will show us what happens

away their secrets. The Enigma machine was an elegant compromise between a truly unbreakable code and a simple cipher. Unfortunately for the Germans, Turing was on the side of the Allies. In the 1930s almost all mathematics, accounting, and code-breaking were performed by humans using pencil and paper. I

mething complex, you had to employ a computer: a person who could do mental arithmetic enormously fast. Richard Feynman’s first job was computing for the Manhattan Project. The question was: Could a computer, either mechanical or human, blindly follow known rules to decide all mathematical questions? Hilbert’s 10" Probl

a topic absent from a typical computer-science education: the physical configuration of a 118 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016921 computation. Von Neumann and Turing posed their questions as theoretical studies, because it was beyond the technology of their day to realize them. But with the convergence of communic

ce in terms of feedback, exploring the cultural rather than engineering uptake of this idea. She begins with primary readings by Wiener, Shannon, and Turing and then pivots from the scientists and engineers to the work and ideas of artists, feminists, postmodern theorists. Her goal: to come up with a new

I’m not going to be a Nobel Prize winner, but I can still be a scientist.’ All of us who were in Physics and had these romantic heroes—the Feynmans, the Manhattan Project—realized that our career trajectory would at best be working on one project at CERN for fifteen years. That project would either be a failure, in whi

a topic absent from a typical computer-science education: the physical configuration of a 118 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016338 computation. Von Neumann and Turing posed their questions as theoretical studies, because it was beyond the technology of their day to realize them. But with the convergence of communic

ce in terms of feedback, exploring the cultural rather than engineering uptake of this idea. She begins with primary readings by Wiener, Shannon, and Turing and then pivots from the scientists and engineers to the work and ideas of artists, feminists, postmodern theorists. Her goal: to come up with a new

I’m not going to be a Nobel Prize winner, but I can still be a scientist.’ All of us who were in Physics and had these romantic heroes—the Feynmans, the Manhattan Project—realized that our career trajectory would at best be working on one project at CERN for fifteen years. That project would either be a failure, in whi