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Robotics Science

The Real da Vinci Code 235

Posted by timothy from the nostradamus-predicted-this dept.
r.jimenezz writes "This month's Wired magazine has a fascinating article about an American roboticist and an Italian scholar who apparently have demonstrated that one of Leonardo's creations, a three-wheeled cart, is actually a 'physically programmable robot'. Very interesting reading."
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The Real da Vinci Code More

The Real da Vinci Code

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  • Everything but the internet (Score:5, Funny)

    by Big Nothing ( 229456 ) <tord.stromdal@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:18AM (#10764291)
    "Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history," says art historian Kenneth Clark, "whom each of us must re-create for ourself." Da Vinci has been credited with inventing just about everything but the Internet."

    It's a shame that we had to wait until Al Gore came along for that one.
    • Of course, we well-informed readers of slashdot all know that Al Gore never actually claimed to have invented the internet...

      http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm [snopes.com]
      • "Of course, we well-informed readers of slashdot all know that Al Gore never actually claimed to have invented the internet"

        Next thing you're gonna tell me that Gates never said that 64K should be enough for everyone?
        • Next thing you're gonna tell me that Gates never said that 64K should be enough for everyone?

          Well, actually, yes! Gates never said that.

          He said that 640K should be enough for anybody.
          • I'd like to do an informal study to figure out if there's a relationship between how old school someone is and if they think of the classic non-Gates quote about 64KB/640KB being enough for anyone. That is, there was a time when PC clones came with 640 KB on board- and that's it. That was the base-level RAM in DOS, anything more in your x86 was considered XMS or EMS. Those of us who remember using DOS on any machines know this and usually remember the quote as 640KB, whereas folks who don't have the same r
            • That's a really good observation here.

              But the reality is, it doesn't matter what Bill Gates say. Yesterday he said Internet Explorer was the safest, fastest more reliable browser. That doesn't mean you should go launch a massive research to see if it's true.

        • Re:Everything but the internet (Score:5, Informative)

          by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:18AM (#10764469)
          lol, though it's like taking candy from a baby, I hate to break it to you but he did never actually say that (for both 64k and 640k, which is the actual hoax statement), at least according to Wired News [wired.com].

      • Re:Everything but the internet (Score:4, Informative)

        by quigonn ( 80360 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:39AM (#10764530) Homepage
        The original quote is (cited from my memory, but I've heard the sound file about a million times): "during my service for the United Status Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet"

        Another memorable quote from him is "I'm not an expert on computers".
        • Another memorable quote from him is "I'm not an expert on computers".

          Well, okay--but how many Senators and Representatives are? Despite that, how many of them insist on making wretched laws about same?

          Gore was at least a bit more in touch than most. There is a difference between being an admitted non-expert and being ignorant.

          Wouldn't the same people be lambasting him if he did call himself an expert? Speaking for myself, I preach alternative browsers, read Slashdot, write code occasionally in a ha

      • Do you see how his comment was marked 'Funny'?

        Relax! It was really just supposed to be funny not a serious political critique that requires your correction.
      • He did seem to make some policy regarding the National Information Infrastructure and then the Global Information Infrastructure. There was already an evolution toward such a system, and he may have hoped to guide its course.

        From the EFF website [eff.org]:
        "At the first World Telecommunication Development Conference in
        March 1994, Vice President Gore called upon every nation to help
        build the GII by using the following principles as
        building blocks:

        o private investment;
        o competition;
        o open ac
    • Al Gore Chaired the Darpa project that created the internet. In a way he did invent it.

    • Leonardo Invents Everything (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MonkeyCookie ( 657433 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @01:28PM (#10767178)
      Does anyone else feel like DaVinci is becoming the Nostradamus of technology?

      For every event that occurs, people point to something Nostradamus said and claimed that he predicted it. Sure, what Nostradamus actually said was very vague and can be made to fit a huge number of events, as no astrologer worth his salt would be too specific for fear of losing his job.

      It also seems that for virtually every technology that comes out, DaVinci managed to invent it a long time ago. Sometimes it's obvious, but it sometimes it seems it's all about interpretation. Sure the device in his drawings could possibly do this or could possibly do that, but is it really so or are people just wanting it to be that way? It seems to be a lot of interpretation, and I've heard so much of it, I'm starting to become rather sceptical.

      Similar to this, Christian fundamentalists love to quote Bible verses to "prove" their point. Not only do Bible verses not hold any water with me, but it seems like anyone can find Bible quotes to support virtually *any* view they have. It would surprise me if there were verses from the Bible, which interpreted in the right way, would support baby sacrifice or atheism.

      It's all about taking already existing facts or words and making them say what you want them to say.
      • I've heard of "Love thy neighbour" being used to support homosexuality, and pre-marital sex.

        It's kinda like how "Kill the infedels" is not "Kill the Americans", it's just traslated that way.

        -Derek

      • It also seems that for virtually every technology that comes out, DaVinci managed to invent it a long time ago.

        Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an undeniable genius; but he was late [wikipedia.org], and standing [wikipedia.org] on the shoulders of giants [wikipedia.org].

        = 9J =

      • Well; human brain is really at its best in finding similarities (patterns, analogies), so it's no wonder that oftentimes similarities are found where none really exist. However, in case of da Vinci, while there may be some over-eagerness in explaining how he invented everything, he truly was a remarkably talented inventor... one that doesn't really need any extra credit. Not to mention being multi-talented individual gifted in other areas as well.

        As opposed to Nostradamus, whose babblings are well over-in

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pmc255 ( 828453 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:19AM (#10764297)
    Doesn't that make the robot program the first computer program in history?

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by frugle ( 769095 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:45AM (#10764377) Homepage
      Doesn't that make the robot program the first computer program in history?

      Perhaps if it were a computer. I suppose that depends on the definitions you give to "computer", "input", "calculate" and "output".

      There are so many definitions of computer from the simple "Machine that processes information" to the more indepth "An electronic device with the ability to (1) accept user-supplied data, (2) input, store, and execute programmed instructions, (3) perform mathematical and logic operations, and (4) output results according to user specifications."

      What does a machine have to be able to do before it can be called a computer?

      • Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)

        by groomed ( 202061 )
        It'd have to be computationally equivalent to a Turing machine.

      • Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )
        Rather than focus on what a "computer" means, perhaps we should focus on what "programmable" means.

        If the movement is controlled by cams, and one can put in a different cam to change the behavior (movement), then that is a kind of programmable abstraction: a new machine is not built for each new variation, but rather the cams hold the "program". We might take that for granted, but it was revolutionary back then.

        I saw a toy like this once, but I don't remember where at the moment. You inserted roughly circ

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by segmond ( 34052 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:58AM (#10764424)
      Nope! It as much a computer program as clocks are!
      • Nope! It as much a computer program as clocks are!

        True... interesting how you could consider an old mechanical clock as a simple arthmetic machine. All it does is add 1 every second, and roll over the second hand every minute, the minute hand every hour, and the hour hand every 12 hours. The technology isn't that far back from the old adding machines with the hand crank on the side (which I actually had as a kid, if I remember correctly).
    • Heron of Alexandria [mlahanas.de] created numerous automata, some programmable, some 1400 years earlier. Da Vinci was familiar with translations of Heron's works, and even tried to recreate some of Heron's machines.
      • What was really interesting about Heron's automata was their manner of programming. They used ropes and pulleys (along with cams and such for motion). In the simplest system, a weight was raised and allowed to fall by it resting on a hopper filled with grain (or sand), which was allowed to drain out. As the grain drained, the weight would fall, drawing the rope with it. The other end of the rope was wound around a shaft. This would turn the shaft, of course. Now, for the intriguing part: along the length of
    • It's as much a computer, as a clock. So if this is considered a computer, then so is a clock. So then, it can't be the first computer.

      This thing is basically a clock. You can also program a clock to give different time by replacing the springs, or changing the gears, etc...

      -Derek

    • No

      See the Architas (428 BC) mechanical bird [st-and.ac.uk], or the Antikyithera (87 BC)orbit calculator [giant.net.au].

    • This is a bit like calling "battlebots" robots. They are not robots, they're just oversized remote controlled toys. A robot is supposed to act autonomously.

      The article seems to suggest that the Da Vinci device would have been controlled by ropes and pulleys with automated drum sounds. So, apart from the drumming, the device would be a battlebot rather than a robot.

      The automated drimming would be equivalent to an old-fashioned music box.

    • Only by running him over.

      [Notis Obscuris: The first usage of "computer" was the simple and obvious "one who computes", i.e. a person. The thing on your desk is an example of the artificial computer, a proper successor to the mechanical computer, and faster but far less flexible than "the first" computer.]

      [To get really obscure, the movie "the computer wore tennis shoes" is doubly ironic as a watershed recognition that people had lost the computer concept and invented the god machine so ubiquetously (sp?)

  • they also found out that robot name was... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:20AM (#10764301)
    Bender!!

    • Re:they also found out that robot name was... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mog007 ( 677810 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <700goM>> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:09AM (#10764448)
      I don't think "Bite my shiny metal ass" would roll off the tounge so easily in Italian.

      • Babelfish (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:26AM (#10764492)
        "Bite my shiny metal ass"

        Translates to:

        "Morda il mio asino lucido del metallo"

        Its even funnier when I translate it back to the Queen's English:

        "It bites my ass I polish of the metal"

        This should be a game... me thinks!

        • Re:Babelfish (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          This should be a game... me thinks!

          it already is. Philip K Dick. wrote about it in the novel Galactic Pot-Healer published in 1969. People would send well-known quotations to the translation computer, translate it into a few different languages, and then back to english. Then someone else would try to guess what the original quotation was. The Game is introduced on the bottom of page 6 of the Vintage (USA) edition. It's kind of tangential to the novel. Typing "galactic pot healer babelfish" into goo
        • If anyone out there's latin is any good, translate

          "Bite my shiny metal ass"

          for me. Would be a good sig.

  • Patent!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by slarshdot ( 211836 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:21AM (#10764303)
    All your technology are belong to Leo.

  • I thought the first programmer is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oddmake ( 715380 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:31AM (#10764336) Journal
    ...Ada Lovelace [sdsc.edu].
    Now,the honor of the first programmer seems to be da Vincci's.
    • Well, it'd still go to Ada for the first electrical programing. da Vincci just did it in mechanicly.

      • Re:I thought the first programmer is (Score:5, Informative)

        by Serious Simon ( 701084 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:47AM (#10764383)
        Electrical? If Ada Lovelace programmed anything, it would have been Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine, which was fully mechanical.

      • Re:I thought the first programmer is (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Singletoned ( 619322 ) <singletoned@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:32AM (#10764508) Homepage
        "Well, it'd still go to Ada for the first electrical programing. da Vincci just did it in mechanicly."

        Babbage's analytical engine was entirely mechanical, and was designed well before the invention of any device providing a consistant flow of electrical energy. However it was never actually built until a hundred years after his death, as engireeing wasn't of a high enough standard in those days to build the parts he required.

        Ada Lovelace described the methods for programming the analytical engine and wrote a program for it (ie literally wrote it). da Vinci didn't actually write a program at all, he just designed a working robot.

        More on Ada Lovelace, (daughter of Lord Byron) [st-and.ac.uk]

        • However it was never actually built until a hundred years after his death, as engireeing wasn't of a high enough standard in those days to build the parts he required.

          Engineering of the day was perfectly capable of building a difference engine. The science museum proved this by building one to the same tolerances that were avaialable at the time. It's quite likely that the analytical engine would have required the same level of precision.
        • However it was never actually built until a hundred years after his death, as engireeing wasn't of a high enough standard in those days to build the parts he required.

          babbage Not quite When first concieved in 1821 Babbage could find nobody with the skills to make the machine until 1832 see the rest below for why it wasn't completed.

          The Difference Engine [sciencemuseum.org.uk] The Difference Engine was conceived in 1821 in an effort to mechanise the production of mathematical tables. Unlike the earlier calculators of Schick

          • Re:I thought the first programmer is (Score:4, Informative)

            by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @12:34PM (#10766671) Homepage
            The strange thing was is that Babbage was likely fully aware of a fairly new invention (for the time), known as the "relay". As a mathematician (of great renown, BTW), he was also fully aware of boolean logic, as well as binary arithmetic. In theory, he could have easily based his machine on boolean logic/arithmetic using relays and electricity - but for some reason, chose not to! It wouldn't be until Herman Hollerith in the late 1800's working in America to calculate the census - using punchcard machine tabulators and electricity, to advance down this road (and much later before more work was done to hook these tabulators together into something like a programmable calculator). I find it strange that Babbage didn't take this next step - and at least marry mechanical bits with electrical bits. It wasn't that his ideas couldn't be carried out with the technology of the day - they could. It was more likely Babbage's grander plans and financial issues (along with difficulties with his draftsman/engineer - Thomas something?) that left him from taking that next step. Had he not abandoned the Difference Engine and built it (by abandoning it, and coming up with the better design for the Analytical Engine - after spending a ton of Crown money for the Difference Engine - I can understand his investors backing out) - he would have gotten money to go ahead with the Analytical Engine in full (or, had he conceived the general purpose Analytical Engine first, etc). Furthermore, if he had taken an electrical/mechanical route - he could have likely saved a lot of money in the building of the machine (less precision needed, less machining needed). Ah well - that's history for you...
            • In theory, he could have easily based his machine on boolean logic/arithmetic using relays and electricity - but for some reason, chose not to!

              The "some reason" is simple: these ideas are not obvious.

              They are "obvious" to us because over the past 200 years a lot of very clever people inched their way slowly out on this particular limb and it didn't snap off. It is difficult (but worth-while) to try to immerse yourself in the mind-set of a past era, to ruthlessly censor your own thoughts that use modern
    • Now, now. We couldn't have a female be the first programmer forever. We've been quietly working on a way to prove someone was before her and now we have. Now I just hope no-one finds out da Vinci stole all his ideas from his wife.

      • Re:I thought the first programmer is (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        He didn't have a wife! He was gay!

        • That is actually a fairly controversial statement, IMO, though historians would disagree.

          Unlike Michelangelo, where there is a fair amount of evidence that he was gay, the only evidence that we have for Leonardo being gay was a) he never married, b) his "protoge" (for lack of a better term) was an attractive young man, whom he nicknamed "Salai" (Little Devil), and c) he was anonymously accused of homosexual conduct once, though he was acquitted due to lack of evidence.

          We can dismiss point c) straight away

      • Re:I thought the first programmer is (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Its likely Babbage programmed his machine first.
    • Not sure if Babbage's machine was Turing complete or anything close to it, but I doubt Da Vinci's cart was anywhere near that. It's sort of like C vs. HTML. Would you consider a HTML coder a programmer? It's arguable but we can no doubt call a C coder a programmer.
      • "Would you consider a HTML coder a programmer?"

        No. I do NOT consider an HTML "coder" a programmer, any more than I would consider the ability to bold and italicize words in a word-processor programming. It makes me absolutely SICK when someone tells me (and I hear it an awful lot), "..and I program web pages."

        HTML work ain't programming until scripting is involved.

        (That vein on my head is popping out just writing this. Arrrrgh!)

  • da Vinci's flawed invention (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:58AM (#10764419)
    "Da Vinci enthusiasts have reconstructed the automobile several times during the past century, but it's never worked. The device seemed destined to join the ranks of da Vinci's grandiose but flawed inventions - what one scholar called his "impossible machines."

    AFAIK, da Vinci (and other inventors of the time) placed errors and flaws in the schematics of their inventions on purpose. The idea was that if someone stole the schematics, he couldn't make it work and claim it as his own. The original inventor would know about the flaw in the schematic, and fix it accordingly.

    • Re:da Vinci's flawed invention (Score:5, Funny)

      by OverflowingBitBucket ( 464177 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:12AM (#10764453) Homepage Journal
      AFAIK, da Vinci (and other inventors of the time) placed errors and flaws in the schematics of their inventions on purpose.

      I'm a software engineer, and I've been doing this for years. I didn't realise da Vinci also had job security issues.
      • AFAIK, da Vinci (and other inventors of the time) placed errors and flaws in the schematics of their inventions on purpose.

        I'm a software engineer, and I've been doing this for years. I didn't realise da Vinci also had job security issues.

        He didn't have 'job security' issues -- he simply had 'security' issues. He didn't want anybody else to steal his ideas, so he would record things incorrectly. I remember seeing a special on tv about reproducing Da Vinci machines, and one of the items they replicated

  • Old news... (Score:5, Informative)

    by DigitalBubblebath ( 708955 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:59AM (#10764426) Homepage

    The BBC had an article [bbc.co.uk] on this back in April. I think it was on TV, too.
  • Some may think that oppression of
    science and technology only happened
    in the dark age but it is still happening today! (read about it here [educate-yourself.org].)

    I have made an eigenpoll to find the best books on alternative science [all-technology.com].

    When starting to study a new subject, I like to find best material on the subject and that is what eigenpolls is designed to do.
    While most pools find the most popular option, eigenpool helps find the rare jewels of a subject and my experience from other eigenpolls is that the rare jewels is about a

  • Bah ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pherris ( 314792 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @07:35AM (#10764516) Homepage Journal
    I'm much more impressed with Dr. Benjamin Franklin's invention of the jet ski. [rochester.edu]
  • ... is that Da Vinci was also the first to obtain a software patent on the software for his programmable robot...

  • This just adds to the confusion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Neo's Nemesis ( 679728 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @08:18AM (#10764670) Journal
    The individual parts, interestingly, are not original to da Vinci - gears, cams, and the verge-and-foliot mechanism were all familiar concepts, particularly to clockmaking, the nanotech of da Vinci's day. Indeed, as the historian Otto Mayr has noted, "clocks and automata, in short, tended to be very much the same thing"; clocks, in 16th-century dictionaries, were considered just one type of automata. But the possibility is that da Vinci married two ideas and created, in essence, a clock on wheels - turning the segmenting of time into the traversing of space - well before anyone else had thought of such a thing.

    Then this leads us to believe that the whole device (robot) itself was a translation of clocks' motion to a linear one on a larger scale. If thats the case, then instead of Da Vinci, the credibility of being the first programmers should be given to the Egyptians [wikipedia.org].

    • "If it was simply a spring-powered cart, it would not be that big a deal," [Rosheim] says. "What's significant is that you can replace or change these cams and alter how it goes about its path - in other words, it's programmable in an analog, mechanical sense. It's the Disney animatronics of its day."

      A clock in itself (water or mechanical) will only tell the time, and isn't programmable. The motion of robot is programmable, which would give Leonardo two significantly new concepts in one invention: transl

  • DaVinci invents BSOD (Score:5, Funny)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @09:02AM (#10764839) Journal
    In other news, apparently every time the invention didn't work as intended, DaVinci would hide it behind a blue canvas screen so that onlookers couldn't see him working on the mechanics - hence the term "Blue Screen of DaVinci" (BSoD) came in to common use during that era for any mechanical device failure.

    In later years, a manufacturer of popular computer operating systems adapted this 'blue screen' imagery for their own use and programmed their applications to displaye a blue screen on a regular basis in honour of the famous inventor and his work on early 'computing' devices.

  • See Scientific American (Score:5, Informative)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@@@gdargaud...net> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @10:21AM (#10765501) Homepage
    This machine was covered in Scientific American magazine a couple months ago.

  • Come on people!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by JamesP ( 688957 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @10:36AM (#10765603)
    Someone forgot the question: But does it run Linux???

  • So what they are describing is an analog program, which translated directly into a motion pattern.

    To understand what they are talking about imagine a lathe [sherline.com] and imagine that you have to produce the same exactly part (a round table leg) over and over again. Now imagine you live in the 1870. Ok, so what do you do? Well, one obvious answer comes to mind:

    Have the cutting bit placed on a rail that goes alone the cutting path. So basically it is a rail that is bent the towards the lathe where the part (table
    • This concept is still used today in a Pin Router (no, not something that works on Printed Circuit Boards). The tracing arm follows a pattern made of metal that contains the curve to be traced, the cutting bit is joined to this arm and moves in and out based on the curve while moving down the wooden blank with a set speed. The wood is turning on a spindle. If it works why change it? You are just basically tracing a design in 2-D and translating that to 3D.

  • Stupid Wired (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @12:07PM (#10766419) Homepage
    Know one of the things that bugs me about the typical Wired writer? Lame attempts to inject dramatic tension in what is, really, just an informational article. Things like this:
    We sit in his office and pore over sketches of the cart on folio 812 recto of the Codex Atlanticus. I reach carefully for the espresso his wife has placed on the table, trying not to spill any on a nearby copy of the Italian mathematician Bernadino Baldi's 1589 translation of Heron of Alexandria's Automata. It is a first edition.

    Wow! I'm on the edge of my seat! Will he spill his coffee on the 400 year old book? Quick! Click the "next page" link and find out!

    • Yeah, I was reading the article (!) and imagining the horror of bibliophiles everywhere at taking food or drink (much less coffee) in the presence of a rare first edition. Hopefully it's just a fictional embellishment...

  • Wired doesn't get Mark Rosheim (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @02:04PM (#10767551) Homepage
    That article sounds like a Reader's Digest reject.

    Mark Rosheim is a well-regarded designer of industrial robot arms. His "Robot Evolution" [amazon.com], is a coffee-table book for mechanical engineers. He's strong on the practical issues academics ignore, like preventing gear-tooth breakage and cable damage in factory operations. Some of his designs are quite elegant. So he's qualified to do this. The article makes him sound like a nut.

    As for automata, it wouldn't be at all surprising for DaVinci to have done entertainment automata. It was one of the few things you could sell in the court-patronage era of mechanics. Understand that in that era, science, art, and mechanism design were hobbies of the rich. This was because you can make beautiful little mechanisms out of brass with hand tools and time, but to make power machinery that does useful work, you need an industrial infrastructure. That didn't come until much later.

    The best early automata are by Jaquet-Droz, and are in a museum in Neuchatel. [isyours.com] They still work, being carefully maintained by Swiss watchmakers, and on the first Sunday of each month, they're demonstrated. The Writer writes, with pen and ink, and can be reprogrammed for different messages. The Draughtsman draws, again in pen and ink. The Musician plays the piano. They are all cam-programmmed, and date from the 1700s. Worth a trip if you're in Switzerland. The Writer is probably the best mechanical automaton ever made.

  • Sooner or later... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Allsup ( 987 ) <(slashdot) (at) (chalisque.net)> on Tuesday November 09, 2004 @06:53PM (#10770789) Homepage Journal
    people must see that just about anything is programmable in some sort of way given a sufficiently clever programmer. Computing
    and computability arises in any aspect of nature that produces any discrete form of organisation. Once you have discrete organisation, you have the basis for primative forms of arithmetic, and from that you may build whatever you like.

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