From: Ian Wright (ian_paul_wright@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Thu Jan 15 2004 - 16:52:56 EST
Hello Rakesh I didn't get the overall direction of your questions, but I was reeled in to try to answer: >Doesn't the movement of mental laboring >activities, e.g. writing code, assume the application of the Babbage >principle to mental operations ... ? Programming labour can be divided into specialities just like any other labour. So there's no difference in kind in this respect. Additionally, the cost of computers and the requisite software to build new software is very low. It's easy to move software development to other low-wage geographical areas, on condition that the local workers are well trained. Plus, any software capital, such as a large and complex software infrastructure, can be compressed and transmitted to the new location at almost no cost. A more philosophical point is that, according to the Church-Turing thesis, the reduction of human mental activity to the simplest operations has been achieved, which completes Babbage's program. The Church-Turing thesis is informally the hypothesis that all human mental activity is replicable by a particular class of machines, of which an ordinary personal computer is a finite example. This means that all mental labour can in principle be automated. As you know in practice lots of virtual machines have already automated many simple mental tasks (e.g., calculators), and some more sophisicated ones (e.g., machine translation of languages). Turing's concept of the Universal Turing Machine (that is a machine able to simulate the operation of all others) bears an uncanny resemblance to a Henry Ford production line: there is a tape containing bits of information (the production line) and a head that moves along the tape altering the arrangement of information (a worker transforming the raw materials into an end product). I don't think this is a concidence, although apparently Turing was inspired by the typewriter. Turing's reduction of mental tasks to the simplest possible operations is not only amazingly abstract it is also amazingly powerful, a truly revolutionary advance in science. This probably doesn't address your question, but talk of Babbage, Turing etc. presses my buttons! (As an aside, I seem to recall that Babbage wrote a book on the division of labour in factories). ATB, -Ian. _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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