Re: <nettime> alphabets and algorithms

[Francis Nowak via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

> Algorithms are expressed with alphabets

People say the modern history of algorithms starts with this problem:

  eine diophantische gleichung mit irgend welchen unbekannten und mit
ganzen rationalen zahlencoefficienten sei vorgelegt : *man soll ein
verfahren angeben, nach welchen sich mittelst einer endlichen anzahl von
operationen entscheiden läßt, ob die gleichung in ganzen rationalen zahlen
lösbar ist.*" (
p. 276 nachrichten von der gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttingen,
mattematisc-physicallische klasse, 1900)

  if you have a diophantine equation, with any number of unknown quantities
and with rational integer coefficients, does a procedure exist that, with a
finite set of operations, can decide if the equation is solvable in
rational integers.

This later turns into the entscheidungsproblem:

  The Entscheidungsproblem is solved once we know a procedure that allows
us to decide, by means of finitely many operations, whether a given logical
expression is universally valid or, alternatively, satisfiable. (Hilbert &
Ackermann 1928: 73)

And into Turing's reformulation:

 [Is there a] machine [Turing machine] which, supplied with any one A of
these formulae, will eventually say whether A is provable.

What ends up being important and useful about all this is that if a given
question can be automatically decided, there are lots of questions that
become economic to decide: for instance, what does a given enigma machine
message say? What's the average of a million numbers? What did you have for
breakfast, and what adds does that make you likely to click on?

On the one hand, I think you can see that algorithms in this sense are
about as fundamental as téchne -- on the other, you can see that a
sophisticated mathematical treatment of algorithms, and their
characteristics, is only really interesting if you have machines you can
run them on, a society that is interested in automatic work, and so on.

All the same, I feel a lot of people associate the algorithmic and
programmatic with print, text, or media - while it's actually closer to
something like an assembly-line: a formalized field of technical, social
and theoretical practice. The alphabets or symbols you use to express these
things are just for the benefit of the programmer: it's fully possible to
make algorithms with solder blobs, and to keep all the words in your head.
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