The Stuff of Computing - Deepstash

The Stuff of Computing

  • In its most fundamental essence, the stuff of computing is symbol structures (systems of symbols, that is, entities that ‘stand for’, represent, or denote other entities like data, information or knowledge).
  • Computing is symbol processing
  • Any automaton capable of processing symbol structures is a computer. 
  • The ‘phenomena’ associated with computers as Perlis, Newell, and Simon suggested are all ultimately reducible to symbol structures and their processing. 
  • We may choose to call such symbol structures information, data, or knowledge depending on the particular ‘culture’ within computer science to which we belong.
  • Computer science is, ultimately, the science of automatic symbol processing, an insight which Allen Newell and Herbert Simon have emphasized. 

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