Homo informaticus | Issue 141 | Philosophy Now
Homo informaticus Luc de Brabandere lets us sail with him along the two great rivers of thought that have flowed down the centuries from ancient philosophy into modern computer science, from Plato and Aristotle to Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. The history of computer science did not begin eighty years ago with the creation of the first electronic computer. To program a computer to process information – or in other words, to simulate thought – we need to be able to understand, dismantle and disassemble thoughts. In IT-speak, in order to encrypt a thought, we must first be able to decrypt...