The Enchantress of Numbers

Augusta Ada Byron, during a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by historians as the world's first computer program, making Ada Lovelace the first programmer in history.

Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies (her father, the reprobate Lord Byron, was a poet, libertine, lecher and other things aside). But Ada's complex inheritance became apparent as early as 1828, when she produced the design for a flying machine. It was mathematics that gave her life its wings.

One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. Ada met Babbage in 1833, when she was just 17, and they began a voluminous correspondence on the topics of mathematics, logic, and ultimately all subjects.

Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer.

Babbage designed his "difference engine" like his other steam-powered mechanical monsters. It's basic architecture was astonishingly similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.

Ada called herself "an Analyst (& Metaphysician)," and the combination was put to use in the Notes. She understood the plans for the device as well as Babbage but was better at articulating its promise. She rightly saw it as what we would call a general-purpose computer. It was suited for "developping [sic] and tabulating any function whatever. . . the engine [is] the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity." Her Notes anticipate future developments, including computer-generated music.

Babbage wrote the following on the subject, in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1846):

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Lovelace's prose also acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which Babbage never published, such as speculating that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

Ada died of cancer in 1852, at the age of 37, and was buried beside the father she never knew. Her contributions to science were resurrected only recently, but many new biographies attest to the fascination of Babbage's "Enchantress of Numbers."

Over one hundred years after her death, in 1953, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished after being forgotten. The engine now has been recognized as an early model for a computer and Ada Lovelace's notes as a description of a computer and software. The modern computer programming language Ada is named in her honour.

If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would have been in many ways more advanced than some of the first computers that emerged in the 1940s. It would have been digital, programmable and Turing complete. Unfortunately, in 1878, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science recommended against constructing the analytical engine, which sank Babbage's efforts for government funding.


As for the Difference Engine, it was finally completed from his original plans, in 1991. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the finished engine functioned perfectly.

We can only imagine what would have happened if the benefits of the Difference Engine had been available in Victorian society. Very much like Leonardo DaVinci's discoveries, kept secret instead of being published, they might have started the age of computers a century earlier!


This bust of Lady Lovelace is in the Babbage-Lovelace park in the Babbage Canals sim.

Objectivist Institute of Second Life!

Voila! The Objectivist Institute of Second Life: a place for objectivists and those interested in objectivism to meet, talk, debate, listen to seminars, watch videos, coordinate RL events, etcetera. It is not innaugurated yet, but we WILL make a big pomp and circumstance of its innauguration, and we'll invite a lot of objectivists (even those who have never tried SL, such as the FROGs [frontrange objectivists]) and maybe a certain Mr. Black (what do you say? wanna take a look? ;) ).

We have:

-Reception
-Informal Lounge
-Vendor selling paraphernalia and merchandise
-Large conference area

That which does not exist cannot have a reflection.

I had been waiting for it since my last "discussion" at the "Embodyment Research Group" meeting, but it apparently took them an entire week to decide to eject me. It may sound rather fatalistic to expect to be ejected from a group, but there you have it.

On the second meeting that I attended for this group, they were apparently talking about "What Is Real" and had come, somehow, to the conclusion that nothing is, in fact, real per se but only if your mind perceived it as real. Now, bear with me as I mentioned that this research group is composed in its majority by university professors.

Allegedly, they are studying "Embodyment" in Second Life. I say allegedly because there is very little Research going on, but what does go on ad nauseam is a great deal of Sharing. For a university research group, they have a very poor methodology: They seem to be very reluctant in creating a definition of "cognition" to work from, they fervently avoid answering questions such as "What is that which we identify as 'self'?", and -perhaps the most important question for this group- "How do we identify an 'embodied' self?" The reason why these questions are important is because you cannot identify the characteristic of an entity (in this case, Self) if you do not know by what traits and properties may one identify said entity. How can you even begin to analyze "Embodyment" if you do not even know what is it that "Embodies" itself?

If you don't know what the Moon is, you don't know what it looks like, where it "hangs out" and when can one see it, you are not going to know the Moon as such when it comes out. Much less will you be able to identify the Moon's reflection on the water as a reflection belonging to the Moon. You'll know it is a reflection and you will see the object that originates it ... but what is it exactly? You aren't quite sure. And you won't be until you decide to study the Moon itself.

In the realm of physical phenomena, you can observe the object directly and gain at least a rudimentary level of understanding through observation and analysis... but in the realm of ideology, philosophy, epistemology? You cannot understand something if you simply refuse to think about it. If you are so afraid of concretization that you flee from definitions, and you seek to invalidate the means by which you can gain understanding (Reason, Mind, Definitions,) then your so-called "research" has no foot to stand on: without definition, without argument, without anything resembling an analytical approach, your discussion is reduced to uttering bromides, talking "From your gut", saying "What you feel" and engaging in "Sharing" more appropriate for a New Age Drum Circle than for a Research group. Which is precisely what this group is doing.

When I intervened in the conversation, I began to ask these very questions, to probe what theoretical platform they were starting from. The result was rather frightening:

• Dr. Leslie H. Jarmon, Ph.D. , Senior Lecturer from The University of Texas at Austin, who in Second Life goes under the name of Bluewave Ogee began an undignified game of semantic nullification- by which she sought to destroy any possible meaning conveyed through the human language and tried to argue that words could be meant to mean anything one wanted them to, and sought to challenge the meaning of words to the very point of articles and pronouns. One can only imagine what sort of lectures Dr. Jarmon conducts at the University. Perhaps she recites a series of unconnected words- or even better, absolute gibberish- to her students, and then she steps down satisfied that her students got something from the lecture because they managed to imbue her utterings with whatever meaning they wanted to.

• Joe Sanchez, a Ph.D. Student teaching two courses at the University of Texas at the Austin School of Information, under the Second Life pseudonym of North Lamar made the argument that, as he was an ethnic minority in America, he could tell me that there wasn't an objective reality. I fail to understand how the concepts of race and an observable, objective, immutable reality are in any way, shape or form related. Unless I am mistaken, being of a certain race does not immediately disqualify one from perceiving and interacting with reality; Foolishness is very democratic and it makes no racial distinctions. One must ask the question... if there is no such thing as an objective reality, then why is Mr. Sanchez teaching at all in the field of information? A reality that is not objective is in a constant state of flux, malleable and changeable; in this sort of reality, the transference of information is impossible since there is no objective medium by which one may convey this information (uttered words will transform themselves into something else, as the very sound waves that are emitted by the mouth are malleable; Writing would keep changing, etc) and the information itself would not be transferable because both the information AND the object/person/event to which it refers will be in constant flux (a murder will occur, but then it will have never occured; a plane would have crashed in a city, but then it will turn into a luxury liner, etc). As you can see, the subject of information and teaching itself become pointless without an objective reality.

• Magellan Egoyan, (presumably) Geoffrey Edwards, Canada Research Chair in "cognitive geomatics" (Upon prodding, I discovered that it is merely an overly complicated name for "feeling good about the space you occupy") of the Université Laval fiercely avoided my questions. "Magellan," I asked, seeking to find the core of this strange group, "A is A, correct?"

The question I asked him is direct enough: Are things what they are? Can we know that A is A? In short: Does reality exist and can it be interacted with, or is A not A and, reality is but an amorphous flux, and nothing can be known for certain?

His reply was very telling: "I'm not terribly interested in the answer, and I'm not sure i agree with the question (...) I think the term "reality" is a euphemism for something else."

You will notice that these three professors, alleged paladins of knowledge, science and discovery, oppose the very means by which discovery is possible. How can you not be interested in the answer to a question that addresses the possibility of acquiring knowledge and understanding that knowledge?

There should be no surprise that they cannot understand the difference between an Objective Reality- a reality that exists independent of perceptions- and Accurate and Inaccurate Perception Of Reality. To them, Perception is Reality. In their standards, a Monochromat's lack of perception of color creates a color-less reality at the same time that your perception of color creates a colorful reality. These subjectivists masquerading as scholars would have you believe that both realities are the same, valid and absolute in their non-absoluteness, instead of addressing the point that one is a disability ("lack of ability or capacity") that impedes an individual from perceiving one characteristic of reality (the color spectrum) and the other one is a more complete biological perception of that characteristic.

When you intentionally flee from acknowledging the existence of reality and the means of identifying it and interacting with it, you are left with nothing but pure subjectivity. This may be fine for flights of fancy, the creation of fairy-tales, the incurably insane, but it is hardly appropriate for an academic and scientific endeavor.

In short, this isn't a Research Group- a group that seeks to uncover something- this is merely a Cover Up Group: A group that does much show of waving their hands around and stroking their beards, saying that their focus of study is the fauna and flora of the Amazon while making sure they conduct their research on the moon. And just think: your taxes are paying for their tenure.

There is very little to wonder that I would ejected from their group. In the words of Magellan, "We are certainly not used to such a contentious style", we are not accustomed to dealing with reality.

~Another page from the SLNNewshound!

First Post

First post, more to come!
Right now I am busy with an article about Heath Elvejhem--- technically speaking I don't know if I should be writing it in the first place, considering the fact that my editor hasn't even answered my petition for the article itself... but the way I see it, when one's editor is a little lazy, initiative is a good thing.

Well, time to go to bed, more time to write tomorrow. Toodle pip!

-The SLNNewshound.