Turing's World 3.0

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What is Turing's World 3.0?

Lost, perhaps, in the furious pace of computer development is the fact that computers in most offices aren’t used very much in activities dependent on the results of theoretical computer science. From word processing to image manipulation, computers tend to be used simply to represent the paper universe in an easily erasable form. Even so, the computer as a logical device presents us with a variety of primary problems, many unsolved, that form the basis of a vast area of investigation.

One of the first investigators, working before electronic computers, was the English mathematician Alan Turing, who postulated that a simple theoretical device could read marks on a paper tape and change them according to a set of internal rules. He showed that this simple device could execute any type of search/replace function on the tape, and that this ability was equivalent to carrying out computations of arbitrary complexity. He also showed that some easily defined functions were not “Turing computable” (not computable by any Turing machine). It’s remarkable that many of the logical limitations of computing devices were discovered before computers were developed; this exploration was motivated by the startling findings of Kurt Godel and other mathematicians in the 1930s on the limitations of logical systems.

An understanding of Turing machines is part of a computer-science education, and the publishing project of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University has produced this disk and book package as an accompaniment to undergraduate courses. It includes a clear description of Turing machines and their uses in theory development, an assortment of Mac-simulated Turing machines on disk, and a library of tapes upon which the machines operate. The disk and book cover basic problems and the assembly of fancier machines that use basic machines as components, and culminate in examples of nondeterministic Turing machines.

The simulated machines are all simple, you can run them step-by-step to see exactly what’s going on, and it’s all quite easy to follow. If you follow popular-science writing, you’ll spot the logical connection between Turing machines and cellular automata and the latest hot topic, artificial life.

Given the almost unbelievable bargain price of this package, I certainly wouldn’t object to another version that cost $29 but included 100 pages or so of additional text material — the package as it stands now is a wonderful accompaniment to coursework but, at 120 pages, is a mite thin for those who simply want to investigate these topics on their own. Even so, it lets you investigate some fundamentals in computing even if you have little computer background and no programming experience.

Seiter, Charles. (February 1994). Turing's World 3.0. Macworld. (pg. 79).


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Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II





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