II.3 MACHINE COMPUTATION

emphasis: data structures, data processing

tape:

* Nothing but Zooms > Cornell Supercomputer Facility's half-hour tape of Mandelbrot set

print references:

Soul of a New Machine, Kidder, computer culture

visit:

Media and Graphics Lab, guided tour of graphics hardware

points:

1. locus of representational object in machine computation

• 'the model', 'the data structure"
• effective but imperceptible object, both formal and material
• multiple/alternative realization possible

2. relation of computation and formal languages

• syntax and semantics

3. computational irreducibility

• non-linear math, etc

concepts:

• discrete vs. continuous math
• analog vs. digital
• hardware
• architectures, von Neumann, parallel, VLSI chips
• system software, application software
• empirical data
• database
• data formats
• arrays, 2D and 3D
• batch vs. on-line processing
• peripherals, pipelines
• algorithm, procedure