| Description |
Computers have brought the world to our fingertips. We will try to understand at a basic level the science--old and new--underlying this new Computational Universe. Our quest takes us on a broad sweep of scientific knowledge and related technologies: propositional logic of the ancient Greeks (microprocessors); quantum mechanics (silicon chips); network and system phenomena (internet and search engines); computational intractability (secure encryption); and efficient algorithms (genomic sequencing). Ultimately, this study makes us look anew at ourselves--our genome; language; music; "knowledge"; and, above all, the mystery of our intelligence. |