ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Toward Ultimate Computing 9
Edmund Hamilton’s 1928 The Metal Giants an artificial brain turned against its
creators.
Computers descended from calculating machines, the earliest of which was
the abacus. In 1642 French mathematician and philosopher Pascal made a
mechanical calculator that used the decimal system to add and subtract. In 1694,
German mathematician/philosopher Leibniz created a “Stepped Reckoner,” which
was supposed to multiply, divide and take square roots. It didn’t work, but
utilized principles later essential to modern computers. Tasks were broken down
into a great many simple mathematical steps using binary numbers and were
performed sequentially. When computers later came to be operated by electricity,
binary zero and one became represented by off and on. In the early 1800’s George
Boole developed “Boolean algebra,” the mathematical logic by which computer
circuits are designed. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace—Lord Byron’s eldest
daughter—designed an “analytical engine” using punched cards. Their
contemporary technology could not construct the machine accurately enough, but
it was built and functioned in the twentieth century.
The first electronic computer was apparently constructed and operated in
1939 by John Vincent Atanasoff, a theoretical physicist at Iowa State University
(Mackintosh, 1987). Shortly thereafter, Alan Turing and colleagues in Bletchley,
England designed a computer to perform all possible mathematical calculations. It
was based on Turing’s work proving the logical limits of computability and was
used to decipher the German “Enigma” code during World War II. In a masterful
presentation of key ideas previously developed by other pioneers, John von
Neumann further advanced computer design by separating the machine from its
problems. Prior to von Neumann, a computer would have to be rewired for each
new task. With enough time, memory and software, computers could solve the
problems that could be broken down into finite sequences of logical steps. Most
current computers use “serial” processing based on von Neumann’s design. In the
1940’s, the University of Pennsylvania developed the first electronic computer,
the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator or “ENIAC.” It weighed 30
tons, took up 3,000 cubic feet of space, and contained 18,000 vacuum tubes, one
of which failed every seven minutes. It could calculate nuclear physics problems
in two hours that would have taken 100 engineers a year to complete. Today, the
same capacity is available on one chip. In 1950 Remington Rand marketed
UNIVAC, which dealt with words and numbers stored by their binary equivalent.
Since that time, roughly four generations of computers have evolved due to
increased demand and advances in design, chip size, materials and other factors.
For the same reasons further advances seem inevitable.
Von Neumann and Turing hoped that computers could duplicate our ability to
think, so that our minds could be amplified just as our muscles had been by
industrial machines. However further evolution of computers using serial
processing seems limited. Computers and artificial intelligence are now evolving
to parallel systems based on brain architecture and neural net models; a future
step may be nanoscale, self organizing intelligence.
Von Neumann is one of several “fathers of the computer.” In the “serial”
processing which he skillfully formalized, information flows in one dimension. In
the 1950’s and 1960’s, von Neumann (1966) and Stanislav Ulam developed the
mathematics of computing in multiple dimensions. They considered two
dimensional information spaces with discrete subunits (“cells”) whose states
could vary depending on the states of neighboring cells. Each cell and its
neighbor relations were identical. Relatively simple rules among neighbors and
discrete time intervals (“generations”) led to evolving patterns and selforganization
which were exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. They called