Philosophy and Computing
A Webliography

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Table of contents

Chapter I -- Divide et Computa: Philosophy and the Digital Environment

General Resources
The Philosophy of Information
The Information Society
The Knowledge Economy and Management
The Digital Warfare
Computers and Mathematical Teaching
Computers in Mathematical Research
Computers and Two Classic Mathematical Problems
Automatic Control (Computing in the Manufacturing Processes)
Virtual Reality
Modelling
From the Analogue to the Digital: the New Physics of Knowledge
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Sociology of the Information Society
Humanities Computing
The Philosophy of Technology
Information Theory
Systems Theory
Other Web Resources for Chapter One

Chapter II --The Digital Workshop

History of Computing
Computing for the Terrified
What is a Computer?
Theory of Computation and Logic
Turing Machines
The Church-Turing Thesis
Other Web Resources for Chapter Two

Chapter III --A Revolution called Internet

History of the Internet
What is the Internet?
What can the Internet be used for?
Other Web Resources for Chapter Three

Chapter IV --The Digital Domain: Infosphere, Databases and Hypertexts

The Hyperbolic Space of the Infosphere
Hypertext
Computer and Information Ethics
Other Web Resources for Chapter Four

Chapter V -- Artificial Intelligence: A Light Approach

General Resources
The Philosophy of AI
Turing and His Test
Testing and Debugging
Genetic Algorithms
Computer Chess and Draughts/Checkers
Fuzzy Logic
Neural Networks
Connectionism
Parallel Computing
(Computational) Complexity
Quantum Computing
Expert Systems, Knowledge Engineering and Formal Ontologies
Robotics, Cybernetics and Artificial Agents
Artificial Life
Other Web Resources for Chapter Five

Conclusion

Chapter I -- Divide et Computa: Philosophy and the Digital Environment

General Resources

FOLDOC - Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing, is the best computer dictionary on the Internet. It is currently available from the following sites: Bilkent University (Turkey) | Instant Web Sites (Sherman Oaks, California) | Institut Gaspard Monge (France) | NightFlight (Vista, California).

TechEncyclopedia contains "more than 11,000 definitions of computer terms and concepts".

Define this term:

PC Webopaedia. A good resource for information about PCs, which "contains definitions of 2,000 computer terms, plus links to web pages related to each term".

Acronym Finder is a searchable database of common acronyms about computers, technology, and telecommunications.

BABEL A Glossary of Computer Related Abbreviations and Acronyms.

Hippias is a peer-reviewed LASE (Limited Area Search Engine) that provides access to philosophy-related resources on the World-Wide Web. "Quality is controlled by a system of hyperlinked internet sites which are managed by qualified professionals who serve as the associate editors of the project. The same procedures that govern quality also serve to limit the scope of Hippias to resources of interest to philosophers."

HIPPIAS Limited Area Search of Philosophy on the Internet

Noesis. A search engine dedicated to philosophy.

NOESIS: Philosophical Research On-Line

ESSAYS LECTURES IMAGES REVIEWS TEXTS TOOLS

CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics

Mathematics Glossary

Dictionary of Mathematics, basic, with an unfortunate background music.

Dictionary of Mathematical Terms (intermediate)

Mathematical Programming Glossary

Glossary of Social Science Computer and Social Science Data Terms

Virtual Computer Library provides pointers to information about computers and computing.

The Directory of Computing Science Journals

Computational Science Education Project Homepage, is an excellent electronic book for teaching computational science, with special emphasis on parallel computing. Not to be missed, also because of its innovative graphics.

An Overview of Computational Science, this is part of the excellent Computational Science Education Project. "Presently there is no generally accepted definition of Computational Science. In broad terms it is about using computers to analyze scientific problems. Thus we distinguish it from computer science, which is the study of computers and computation, and from theory and experiment, the traditional forms of science. Computational Science seeks to gain understanding principally through the analysis of mathematical models on high performance computers. The term computational scientist has been coined to describe scientists, engineers and mathematicians who apply high performance computer technology in innovative and essential ways to advance the state of knowledge in their respective disciplines. More recently, computational science has begun to make inroads into other areas such as economics, music and visual arts."

Computational Science/Parallel Processing Tutorial and Educational Materials, from Syracuse University, this web service lists educational source materials for a computational science course, organized according to topic area.

Internet FAQ Archives contains Usenet Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) postings in Hypertext format and in FTP archive textual format. FAQs are one of the most original forms of "literature" that has been generated by the development of the Internet.

The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies.

The Computer Information Centre (CompInfo). This is a key reference site for IT/IS users and buyers, with links to hardware and software companies, industry organisations and user groups, technology information sources, online support and up-to-date news. There is no subscription charge or usage charge.

Tools For Thought: The People and Ideas of the Next Computer Revolution, by Howard Rheingold. First published by Simon & Schuster, 1985. Copyright Howard Rheingold, 1985. This book is out of print; all rights have reverted to the author. Very good, if a bit outdated now. To be read more as a cultural essay than a technical introduction. The chapter on Turing Machines is clear and understandable.

Academic Info: Computer Science. This directory of sites on computer science includes links to sites on programming languages, artificial intelligence, computer ethics and technical reports. A list of academic organizations is also included.

Association for Computing Machinery. "ACM is the world's oldest and largest educational and scientific computing society. Since 1947 ACM has provided a vital forum for the exchange of information, ideas, and discoveries. Today, ACM serves a membership of more than 80,000 computing professionals in more than 100 countries in all areas of industry, academia, and government."

Information Systems Meta-List. "This list is an attempt to provide a comprehensive set of pointers to information systems resources on the Internet. It is sponsored by the Center for the Application of Information Technology. Though you may find general computer information here, the intent of this list is to meet the needs of professional information systems people looking for answers to technology problems."

Virtual Library Subject Catalogue.

The Philosophy of Information

FAQ: Computers and Philosophy, by mailto:[email-masked], Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna.

Computational Epistemology Lab. "The CEL, headed by Professor Paul Thagard of the Department of Philosophy, the University of Waterloo, is a facility for research into Cognitive Science and related areas of Philosophy. This page contains information about the members of the CEL and about their activities, including preprints, abstracts, and bibliographies."

The Epistemology and Learning Group.

Principia Cybernetica Project (PCP).

Artificial Culture: Experiments in Synthetic Anthropology - Computational Anthropology.

Epistemological Connections. Some of the essays are interesting. See also the section entitled  Philosophy and Computing.

Committee on Philosophy and Computers. This is the APA committee, whose activities concern mainly the use of computer technology in philosophy teaching, research and professional cooperation.

Annual Conference on Computing and Philosophy (CAP)

Some Philosophical Remarks on the Foundations of Computing, Ronald P. Loui

Cyberphilosophy Journal - Online

MiniSymposium on The Interactive Foundations of Computing, Washington University, St. Louis, November 7, 1997

The Information Society

Glossary of Terms for the Digital Era

ISPO Information Society Project Office. ISPO is an initiative of the European Union that "aims to promote co-operation and development in the various areas of the Information Society. ISPO acts as a bridgebuilder between Commission Services and external organizations interested in the Information Society". It is probably the best starting point.

The Institute for Information Studies. "The Institute for Information Studies was established in 1987 by NORTEL in association with The Aspen Institute, to recognize the increasingly significant role and responsibility of executives in leveraging the information assets of their enterprise. Sessions focus on the importance of information communication in business strategy".

TIS - The Information Society. A refereed, international quarterly journal published since 1981. It "is a key critical forum for leading edge analysis of the impacts, policies, system concepts, methodologies related to information technologies and changes in society and culture."

Education in the Information Society, click here for a local mirror copy. This is an essay by Barbara Lepani, Australian Centre for Innovation and International Competitiveness, University of Sydney.

Libraries in the Information Age, David C. Martin, Cheong S. Ang, Marc E. Solomon, and Michael D. Doyle, Library and Center for Knowledge Management, University of California, San Francisco.

Electronic Books. A selected list of resources.

Smart Houses? No Thanks by Jim Brown.

The Knowledge Economy and Management

"New language for new leverage: the terminology of knowledge management", by Philip C. Murray. "The terminology of knowledge management, which now often wobbles between meaningful label and hype, even affects our job descriptions and options as professionals, because the right words can generate mindshare and status as well as convey meaning. This is our first effort at pushing the terminology of knowledge management in the direction of consistency and usefulness. We've done some research to produce some initial definitions, but we'll need your help to achieve a consensus."

Knowledge Management. A very useful site provided by the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute of the University of Edinburgh.

The Knowledge Management Forum, "a community of practice discussing the theories, methods, and practices collectively called - Knowledge Management". The best place where to start any investigation in the field of Knowledge Management.

Knowledge Management, an annotated selection of resources from Craig Marion.

The Knowledge Economy: The Nature of Information in the 21st Century, by the Institute for Information Studies Home Page. "This volume provides a window into the thought of tomorrow on the nature of information from six different perspectives, with papers by: Stephen H. Haeckel and Richard L. Nolan on technology ("The Role of Technology in an Information Age: Transforming Symbols Into Action"); Roger G. Noll on economics ("The Economics of Information: A User's Guide"); Blake Ives and Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa on business ("Competing with Information: Empowering Knowledge Networks with Information Technology"); Peter F. Cowhey and M. Margaret McKeown on world affairs ("The Promise of a New World Information Order"); Sara B. Kiesler and Pamela Hinds on sociology ("Technology, Information and Social Behavior"); Charles R. McClure on education ("Network Literacy in an Electronic Society: An Educational Disconnect?"); and an introduction by Nicholas Johnson."

Intranet/Knowledge Management Resource Center. A good starting point, contains a list of resources compiled by Michael Epple.

Knowledge Management, from Gene Bellinger, OutSights. "The question is, what is this activity called knowledge management, and why is it so important to each and every one of us? The following writings, articles, and links will attempt to offer some emerging perspectives in response to these questions. As you read on you can determine whether it all makes any sense or not."

Global Knowledge Economy (David Skyrme Associates), a brief presentation of the topic.

The Informational Space Economy. A very interesting site, with plenty of ideas and indications to explore, from G・ter Krumme, University of Washington, Seattle.

Knowledge Science Institute. The KSI was founded at the University of Calgary in 1985 with a mandate to study all aspects of the knowledge economy.

The Digital Warfare

Information Warfare and Information Security resources on the Web. A very comprehensive guide to information warfare resources on the Web, as well as a directory of points of entry to related resources, organised by the the Federation of American Scientists, a "privately-funded non-profit policy organization whose Board of Sponsors includes over 55 American Nobel Laureates. FAS was founded as the Federation of Atomic Scientists in 1945 by members of the Manhattan Project who produced the first atomic bomb".

Force XXI Homepage. Force XXI is USA Army's project for the 21st century, a complete reconceptualization and redesign of the force at all levels. "To meet the needs of a volatile and ever changing world, the American Army will be a force organized around information and information technologies. The central and essential feature of this Army will be its ability to exploit information." (I suspect that the extraordinary poor quality of the most of the pages in 1999 was brilliant camouflaging). Here is an article describing the project and an article, entitled "Digital Warfare: Using Malicious Computer Code As A Weapon", that illustrates the kind of problems encountered in the digital warfare.

Guerre de l'information, Information Warfare, Articles et Documents.

Computers and Mathematical Teaching

CTI Mathematics. CTI Mathematics is a national centre, funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils, set up to support and promote the use of computers in teaching Mathematics at degree level throughout the UK.

Technology in Math Education, from The Math Forum, a Centre for Mathematical Education on the Internet, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

Computers in Mathematical Research

Discovery - Insights Through Advanced Computing, from the Cornell Theory Centre, provides an interesting collection of several non-technical papers that introduce areas of application of computational mathematics.

Computational Mathematics Links, from the University of Vienna Computational Mathematics Group.

CSC Mathematical Topics, from Center for Scientific Computing (CSC), the Finnish national large scale computing facility.

ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics
aims to foster European research and development in the areas of information technology and applied mathematics.

Computers and Two Classic Mathematical Problems

Pi through the ages, from MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. In 1949 a computer was used to calculate pi to 2000 places.

The four colour theorem, from MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. "The Four Colour Theorem was the first major theorem to be proved using a computer, having a proof that could not be verified directly by other mathematicians."

Automatic Control (Computing in the Manufacturing Processes)

A list of resources, from the Division of Automatic Control, Department of Electrical Engineering, Linking University.

Virtual Reality

On The Net, resources in Virtual Reality.

Open Virtual Reality Testbed Home Page.

What Is Virtual Reality?A Web-Based Introduction, by Jerry Isdale.

An Introduction to Virtual Reality, by Michael Louka.

Virtual Reality Society. See An online glossary of VR terms   |   The history of VR. Are you here?.

UK Virtual Reality Special Interest Group.

Modelling

Formal Methods."Traditional engineering disciplines rely heavily on mathematical models and calculation to make judgments about designs. For example, aeronautical engineers make extensive use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to calculate and predicte how particular airframe designs will behave in flight. We use the term ``formal methods'' to refer to the variety of mathematical modelling techniques that are applicable to computer system (software and hardware) design. That is, formal methods is the applied mathematics of computer system engineering, and, when properly applied, can serve a role in computer system design analogous to the role CFD serves in aeronautical design.Formal methods may used to specify and model the behavior of a system and to mathematically verify that the system design and implementation satisfy system functional and safety properties. These specifications, models, and verifications may be done using a variety of techniques and with various degrees of rigor.

From the Analogue to the Digital: the New Physics of Knowledge

Dictionary of Programming Languages.

Concepts of Programming Languages, rather technical lecture notes by Phillip J. Windley.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

ACM SIGCHI Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. "ACM SIGCHI brings together people working on the design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use. ACM SIGCHI provides an international, interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas about the field of human-computer interaction (HCI)."

Sociology of the Information Society

Sociology of Knowledge. A list of papers and other resources from Martin Ryder, University of Colorado at Denver, School of Education.

Sociology of Knowledge. "To what extent are different types of knowledge socially constructed?" An essay and a number of resources from Michael C. Kearl.

Humanities Computing

Introduction to Humanities Computing, McMaster University. Very good.

The Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities. "CETH serves all U.S. scholars, researchers and teachers involved with the creation and use of electronic text applications in the humanities. CETH was established in 1991 as a joint project of Rutgers and Princeton Universities following an international planning meeting, and has received substantial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation."

Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences. "CHASS is a computing facility within the Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto. It was created on May 1, 1996 by merging two computing centres: the EPAS Computing Facility and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, which - for the previous decade - have been separately serving social sciences and humanities disciplines at this University. The Facility's broad mandate is to promote computing in research and teaching within the humanities and social sciences departments."

What is Humanities Computing? Toward a Definition of the Field, by W. McCarty.

Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, by: D. C. Engelbart.

The Philosophy of Technology

Essays on the Philosophy of Technology.

Information Theory

Primer on Information Theory by Thomas D. Schneider, best introduction to Shannon's theory.

Entropy in Information and Coding Theory, by Chris Hillman. A very good starting point, part of his Entropy on the World Wide Web.

A Short Course in Information Theory. by David J. C. MacKay. Excellent.

A Brief Tutorial on: Information Theory, Excess Entropy and Statistical Complexity - Discovering and Quantifying Statistical Structure, by David Feldman.

A Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude E. Shannon.

An Invitation to Algorithmic Information Theory, by G. J. Chaitin.

Systems Theory

General Sytems Theory was developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1940's. The theory delineates rules that govern types of behaviour of a variety of entities, both living and non-living. These rules can be conceptualized as systems with various interacting components. Laws can be formulated to describe how any system functions. To elaborate these laws, systems can be mapped by feedback tests. The tests involve adjusting one aspect of a system and then measuring the effect this has on the other components of the system.

Non-linear Systems FAQ.

Non-linearity and Complexity Glossary.

Basic Concepts in Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. "Taken from a Workshop presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences June 1996 at Berkeley, California."

Introduction to Systems Theory. A series of slides.

Introduction to Systems Theory. Lecture notes.

Introduction to Complex Systems, by David Kirshbaum

Principia Cybernetica Project (PCP).

Other Web Resources for Chapter One

"On July 3, 1988, the U.S. cruiser Vincennes shot down an aircraft that its crew thought was an Iranian F-14 approaching the ship to carry out a possible attack. In actuality, it was an Iranian commercial flight. All 290 passengers on board were killed." Here is a military report.

Gulliver's Travels.

Chapter II -- The Digital Workshop

History of Computing

The History of Computing."This WWW page is the initiation of a collection of materials related to the history of computing as collected and written by J. A. N. Lee, until recently Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, past chair of the IEEE Computer Society History of Computing Committee and current chair of the IFIP Working Group 9.7 (History of Computing). It was original constructed as part of the course materials for the "Professionalism in Computing" class at Virginia Tech, and in particular as a set of notes and amplification of the materials in the video "The Machine That Changed The World", developed and distributed by WGBH (PBS) and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC)."

The Machine that Changed the World. The slides "outline the major topics of presentation in each of the episodes of the video series The Machine That Changed the World which was produced by WGBH Television in Boston MA, in cooperation with the British Broadcasting Corp., with support from ACM, NSF and UNISYS."

A Very Brief History of Computer Science, by Jeffrey Shallit, very brief, contains only the essential indications plus a good list of useful links. It is the minimum you may wish to know about the topic.

Computers: History and Development.

History of Computing, information about the history of computing, assembled by Mike Muuss.

What was the first computer and who built it?- A Chronology of Digital Computing Machines (to 1952) by Mark Brader.

Computer Museum Network.

Computing Science: Reinventing the Computer,by Brian Hayes, American Scientist, Vol. 85, No. 1, January-February 1997, pages 16-20. On notions of computing that go beyond the concepts of files, programs and the desktop metaphor.

Pioneers of Computing

Babbage Home Page, maintained by R.A.Hyman. "In October 1871, NATURE took note of the death of Charles Babbage, a wayward genius and scourge of the scientific and political establishments. The obituary is more revealing than most others published during this period, which were invariably bland hagiographies. [...] Ada, Countess Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who assisted Babbage in his work on the difference engine and has become in recent years something of a feminist totem, is not mentioned. Nor is it recorded that Babbage rejected a knighthood as a vanity inappropriate for a scientist." VOL 5, 28 1871.

Charles Babbage

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace

John von Neumann.

Computing for the Terrified

Jan's Illustrated Computer Literacy 101, very well-designed, elementary level for the terrified.

Computer Science: A Liberal Arts Approach, by Mary Beth Rosson and John A. N. Lee.

Great Ideas in Computer Science, elementary course for liberal arts students, by John Howland.

Introduction to Computer Systems, by Sean Donnellan.

Introduction to Computers, by Bill Dueber, includes the complete text to Bruce Sterlings' The Hacker Crackdown.

An Introduction to Microcomputers, elementary introduction by Geoffrey Rockwell, Humanities Computing Centre, McMaster University.

Introduction to Microprocessors, an introductory-level class dealing with the basic mechanics of modern microprocessors. from F. Merat.

What is a Computer?

What is a Computer? An Electronic Discussion, by Patrick J. Hayes.

Computer Information Centre. The Computer Information Centre (CompInfo) is a key reference site for IT/IS users and buyers, with links to hardware and software companies, industry organisations and user groups, technology information sources, online support and up-to-date news.

Computer Architecture, by Xiannong Meng.

Computation Theory and Logic

Boolean Logic, Set Theory, Functions Theory and Elementary Logic for Computing, by Deborah A. Stacey , very introductory and accessible.

Computational Models and Computability, by Tom LeBlanc. Introductory notes, accessible.

Formal Languages and Theory of Computation, a very brief and clear introductory note by R. E. Newman-Wolfe.

Theory of Computing, a claer summary, brief and accessible, by Tim Hoad.

Fundamentals of Computing, by Leonid A. Levin. "These are the notes for the course CS-172 I taught in the Fall of 1986 at UC Berkeley. The goal was to introduce the undergraduates to basic concepts of Theory of Computation and to provoke their interest in further study. The model-dependent effects were systematically ignored. Concrete computational problems were considered only as illustrations of general principles. The notes (prepared by the students and revised by me) are skeletal: they do have (terse) proofs, but exercises, references, intuitive comments and examples are missing or inadequate. The better is English in a paragraph the smaller was my contribution and the greater caution is needed."

Computational Logic, by Michael R. Genesereth.

Formal Computation, by A. N. Walker. This is technical, but readable, it clarifies a number of essential issues and provides a very good, online, full introduction to the concepts of computation, algorithm, correctness, feasibility and complexity.

Evaluating Computational Model.

Grounding Analog Computers, Bruce J. MacLennan.

Turing Machines

Turing Machine a very short article, from the the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

A simple definition of a Turing machine, showing how it can be represented as a table or as a finite-state automaton.

Turing Machines I, Turing Machines II, by Peter Suber

Turing Machines Syllabus for CSC 4170-50 Theory of Computation, by David Matuszek. Very good, accessible although fairly technical. It contains many other links to other sites with material on Turing Machines, including on-line simulations and software packages.

Super-Turing Machines Bibliography Entry    |   Hava Sigelmann.

The Church-Turing Thesis

The Church-Turing Thesis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), by B. Jack Copeland. Splendid, not to be missed.

Other Web Resources for Chapter Two

Mathematical Problems, Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris in 1900, by David Hilbert.

Concepts of Programming Languages, by Phil Windley and Paul Black.

A funny proof that the Halting Problem is solvable

Chapter III -- A Revolution called Internet

History of the Internet

Hobbes' Internet Timeline, by Robert H'obbes' Zakon. "An Internet timeline highlighting some of the key events and technologies which helped shape the Internet as we know it today.". The best starting place to study the history of the net.

Internet Timeline by BBN.

Life on the Internet Net Timeline.

25th Anniversary of ARPANET.

ARPANET and Beyond, by Sean Tappendorf.

Internet Archive. "It is collecting and storing public materials from the Internet such as the World Wide Web, Netnews, and downloadable software. The Archive will provide historians, researchers, scholars, and others access to this vast collection of data and ensure the longevity of this information."

What is the Internet?

What is the Internet, Anyway? by John S. Quarterman and Carl-Mitchell Smoot. It  provides some examples and a very clear analysis.

"The Infrastructure of the Information Infrastructure", by Brian Hayes, American Scientist, Computing Science, Vol. 85, No. 3, May-June 1997, pages 214-218. An interesting and unusual walk within the physical layer of the Internet.

CREN - Corporation for Research and Educational Networking

EFF. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization working in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties, including privacy and freedom of expression, in the arena of computers and the Internet. EFF was founded in 1990, and is based in San Francisco, California, with offices in Washington, DC, and New York City."

ISOC. "Since 1992, the Internet Society has served as the international organization for global coordination and cooperation on the Internet, promoting and maintaining a broad spectrum of activities focused on the Internet's development, availability, and associated technologies."

World Wide Web Consortium. "The W3C was founded in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. We are an international industry consortium, jointly hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] in Europe; and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users; reference code implementations to embody and promote standards; and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology."

Internet Statistics and Demographics.

Glossary of Internet Terms, by Matisse Enzer.

What can the Internet be used for?

Beginner's Guides from Yahoo    |   Beginner's Guides from AltaVista

Other Web Resources for Chapter Three

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan.

Descartes, Meditations.

5 ans d'Internet, Magazine L'Agora, vol 5, no 4, juillet-ao皦 98.

"Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet". The book  was published in 1997 by IEEE Computer Society Press, but an online version has been available since 1994 with many of the articles appearing online earlier. This is the online draft.

Where Is the Information? CSA Newsletter, Fall '97

Chapter IV -- The Digital Domain: Infosphere, Databases and Hypertexts

The Hyperbolic Space of the Infosphere

Hyperbolic Tilings (Sascha Rogmann).

Right Pentagonal Dodecahedron.

The Ontology of Cyberspace: Questions and Comments, William J. Rapaport with David R. Koepsell, Technical Report 95-25 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, 1995) and Technical Report 95-09 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science, 1995).

Hypertext

Hypertext FAQ.

Hypertext Terms. "This is a glossary of terms used within the WWW project. In most cases, their use corresponds to conventional use in hypertext circles."

Short History of Hypertext, from Sun.

Multimedia Pioneers.

Hypertext at Brown. "Brown University has played a major role in the design and development of both hypertext systems and materials ever since Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam worked together here in the 1960s."

Hypertext and HTML, introductory slides on hypertext suitable for displaying in a class.

Reading and Writing Hypertext, a clear essay on the nature of hypertext, by David S. Miall.

Cyber_lit. "Cyber_lit engages literature in new media environments. Cyber_lit is designed to facilitate interaction with electronic forms of literary creativity, and to disseminate the technical skills needed to produce your own material. The course doesn't stop at the reading list. It is offered as a one semester course for third year students of English literature at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London." Check the resources.

Hypertext Resources.

Hypertext and Hypermedia: a Select Bibliography, compiled by Scott Stebelman. Last updated 12/97.

Literary Resources - Hypertext. This page is part of the Literary Resources collection maintained by Jack Lynch

Postmodern Theory, Culture Studies and Hypertext, by Tom Goldpaugh.

Hyperizons: Theory and Criticism of Hypertext Fiction, by Michael Shumate.

Hypertext & Literary Theory: Essays.

Literary and Critical Theory: Individual Theorists.

As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush   | another url |

On Memex, see Jerome McGann's "Rationale of Hypertext" or Stuart Moulthrop's musings (Moulthrop is one of the more interesting commentators in this field). Peter M・ler of Berlin has an essay on Writing Hypertext Books (an attempt to establish some basic guidelines that could however use a thorough edit for its English). For design and other considerations, see our What's Next? page. Also available, an excellent reading list by J.N. Tolva.

Project Xanadu, by Ted Nelson.

Hypermedia and Virtual Reality, by Chris Hand, hypertext/hypermedia, virtual environments and their interrelationships.

Computer and Information Ethics

Philosophy and Computing   contains only a brief paragraph on this important topic. Here you can  find some resources and two articles that I hope may become a new chapter in a future edition of the book:

A Short Webliography on Computer Ethics for Philosophers

Information Ethics: On the Philosophical Foundation of Computer Ethics

Does information have a moral worth in itself? (Click here to download a postscript file).

Other Web Resources for Chapter Four

Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, and Democritus, the laughing philosopher.

BIBLIOMANIA "A love of books pursued to the point of unreason or madness. One Don Vicente, a Spanish scholar, is reputed to have committed murder to obtain a supposedly unique book."

Match:
All
Any
Format:
Long
Short
Scope
All Bibliomania
Fiction
Non Fiction
Phrase and Fable
Reference
Poetry
Key Words

Digital Dilemmas Are Libraries and IT Centres Causes for Concer? by Colin Steele

Chapter V -- Artificial Intelligence: A Light Approach

General Resources

The Outsider's Guide to Artificial Intelligence, by Jorn Barger.

An Introduction to the Science of AI.

What is AI?,  by John McCarthy.

Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems.

AI resources on the Internet, as a service to Artificial Intelligence researchers internationally, maintained by the Institute for Information Technology, one of the 16 research institutes of the National Research Council of Canada.

CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository. "The CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository was established by Mark Kantrowitz in 1993 to collect files, programs and publications of interest to Artificial Intelligence researchers, educators, students, and practitioners."

Computational Approach to the Study of Thinking. Lecture notes.

Cognitive Science, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Artificial Intelligence, from Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1993.

OFAI Library Information System Biblio, searchable database containing data on books, research papers, conference papers, journal articles from many subareas of Artificial Intelligence.

American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

About AI. "This is a special web site provided by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for students, teachers, journalists, and everyone who would like to learn more about what artificial intelligence is, and what AI scientists do." There is a section dedicated to the Philosophy of AI.

MIT's graduate course on the foundations of artificial intelligence by David McAllester.

Bibliographies on Artificial Intelligence.

The Society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour is the UK's largest and foremost Artificial Intelligence society. It is one of the oldest established such organisations in the world. The Society has an international membership of nearly 900 drawn from both academia and industry. Membership of AISB is open to anyone with interests in Artificial Intelligence and the Cognitive and Computing Sciences.

MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory at Iowa State University.

Usenet Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy (dedicated to philosophical discussions concerning AI); comp.ai (general discussion of topics related to AI), Help/Doc: Artificial Intelligence FAQ; comp.ai.fuzzy (fuzzy set theory and logic), Help/Doc: Fuzzy Logic and Fuzzy Expert Systems FAQ; comp.ai.genetic (genetic algorithms), Help/Doc: Genetic Algorithm FAQ; comp.ai.neural-nets (on neural networks), Help/Doc: Neural Network FAQ; comp.ai.nlang-know-rep (natural language and knowledge representation); comp.ai.shells (artificial intelligence shells), Help/Doc: Expert System Shells FAQ.

Artificial Intelligence, by David Corne, is a good guide to AI resources, part of the Virtual Library services. May be outdated.

Artificial Intelligence Resources, a good site for resources on AI, by the Image, Speech and Intelligent Systems (ISIS) research group which is part of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Cognitive-Neuroscience Resources, from The Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition

Birmingham Cognition and Affect Project Online Repository. Papers before 1996 | Papers since 1996 (inclusive)

Machine Translation: A Brief Introduction, by Thomas D. Hedden

The Philosophy of AI

Artificial Intelligence, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Artificial Intelligence, brief overview.

Artificial Intelligence: History, Philosophy and Practice, by Yossi Mamroud, Philosophy Department, Tel-Aviv University. An excellent collection of resources, not to be missed, it contains many links not included here. Mirror Site.

Links to other AI services, by the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.

A Collection of Resources.

Philosophy and AI, by Brian Rosmaita et al. Last updated 1997.

Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated Bibliography, Part 4: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, by D. J. Chalmers. Hundreds of annotated entries. Very useful for any initial research.

Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, by Selmer Bringsjord.

What is Artificial Intelligence?, Istv疣 S. N. Berkeley

Confirmation and the Computational Paradigm, David J. Buller

Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation Cognition Isn't, by Stevan Harnad.

Philosophy of Minds & Machines, by Peter Suber. See also the page on relevant links.

Searle's Chinese Room Argument against Strong-AI

Is the Brain a Digital Computer?, by John R. Searle.

The Chinese Room Argument, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The Chinese Room Argument and Replies to it.

Chinese Room

Chalmers Bibliography on Chinese Room

Episteme Links

Chinese Room

More from Chalmers

Chinese Room

Dangermouse on Searle

Gel’s Incompleteness Theorems and Artificial Intelligence

Goedel Propositions for the Mind, Kari Coleman, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia

Home Page of J.R. Lucas

Minds, Machines, and Gel, by J.R. Lucas.

The Implications of Gel's Theorem (1998), by J.R. Lucas.

Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections, by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, reprinted from Journal of Consciousness Studies (2)1:36-53, 1996.

Minds, Machines, and Metamathematics: Constraints on the Mathematical Objection to Mechanism, by Brian J. Rosmaita. "This paper will provide a detailed background for the assessment of Lucas/Penrose type arguments (and there are more--see, e.g., Wright [1995]) by examining the basic form of argument under discussion and articulating the constraints a successful version must meet. "

Lucas's fallacy modified: A Critique of Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, by  Matt Caywood.

Turing's O-machines, Searle, Penrose and the Brain, by B. Jack Copeland.

Mindless Machines - Computers Don't Think Like Experts, and Never Will, by Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus.

Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities, a special issue edited by Stefano Franchi and G・en G・eldere. The Volume 4, issue 2 of the Stanford Humanities Review is devoted to the exploration of convergences and dissonances between Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities.

The Mind as the Software of the Brain, by Ned Block

Turing and His Test

Alan Turing Home Page

Alan Mathison Turing: The Maker of Our Age, by Justin Leiber

Computing Machinery and Intelligence, by Alan Turing   |   another url.

Alan Turing Scrapbook - Turing Test by Andrew Hodges

The Turing Test Page. Excellent site. It contains links to many papers I have not reproduced here. Not to be missed.

Why The Turing Test is AI's Biggest Blind Alley, by Blay Whitby

Turing Machines and the Turing Test.

The Turing Project. "The Turing Project exists to develop and apply the ideas of the mathematical logician Alan Turing (1912-1954). Turing's work plays an important role in research in philosophy of mind, mathematical logic, computer science, and cognitive science."

Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test, Stuart M. Shieber, Aiken Computation Laboratory, Division of Applied Sciences, Harvard University

The Loebner Prize Home Page is the annual competition in artificial intelligence started by Dr. Hugh Gene Loebner ([email-masked]) of New York City in 1991. A $100,000 prize is offered to the author of the first computer program to pass an unrestricted Turing test. Annual competitions are held each year with a $2000 prize for the best program on a restricted Turing test. The 1995 and 1996 events were unrestricted Turing Tests, requiring computer entries to converse indefinitely with no topic restrictions. So far, even the best programs give themselves away almost immediately, either by simple grammatical mistakes or by repetition.

Turing Test and its "empirical counterpart", the Loebner Prize competition. "A fairly incomplete list of Web resources (most of them mirrored documents)".

How my program passed the Turing Test, by Mark Humphrys, contains an entertaining report of an email conversation in which someone apparently mistook an Eliza-like software for a real person, plus a lot of links concerning AI, Turing Test and Eliza-like software. Appendix: transcript of a dialog.

Eliza. Here you can play with Eliza. There is a stand-alone DOS program you can download from the net. Locate the nearest copy via AltaVista.

Julia. Julia is a Chatterbot, that is a program that attempts to pass the Turing test and is a descendant of Eliza (to talk to Julia, login as "julia" with no password).

Chatterbots, Tinymuds, And The Turing Test: Entering The Loebner Prize Competition, by Michael L. Mauldin. How chatterbots work, and why they are largely useless. The author acknowledges that "The only funded research we know of in Turing systems is for entertainment: providing agents for interactive fiction. In such works, the reader wishes to be fooled; it becomes a positive part of the experience."

Lenny Foner's What's an Agent, Anyway? A Sociological Case Study by Lenny Foner (about Julia)

My Experience with the 1994 Loebner Competition by Thom Whalen (winner 1994)

How I Lost the Contest and Re-Evaluated Humanity by Thom Whalen (1995)

What's It Mean to Be Human, Anyway? by Charles Platt

"The Ultimate Turing Test" by David Barberi

Minimum Intelligent Signal Test: An Alternative Turing Test by Chris McKinstry

Testing and Debugging

A Review of Formal Methods, by Robert L. Vienneau.

Program Verification: The Very Idea, discussion on Usenet in response to H. Fetzer, Program Verification: The Very Idea, Comm. ACM, Sept. 1988, collected by Brad Cox.

Genetic Algorithms

Genetic Algorithms Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). "Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) are relatively new technologies which are inspired by the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. A population of individuals, each representing a possible solution to a problem, are initially created at random. Then pairs of individuals combine to produce offspring for the next generation. The system is run for dozens or hundreds of generations. Because the probability of an individual reproducing is set to be proportional to the goodness of the solution it represents, the quality of the solutions in successive generations improves "automatically." The process is terminated when an acceptable or optimum solution is found, or after some fixed time limit. GAs and GP are appropriate for problems which require optimization with respect to some known criterion. These technologies can also be used for classification problems where data is available but good classification rules are not known. For GAs problem solutions are coded as long binary vectors called chromosomes which are merged and permuted in the reproduction process. For GPs a solution is represented by a tree structured LISP program. Random subtrees of the two parents are exchanged and permuted to form the offspring. An advantage of GAs/GP is that it is not necessary to know in advance how to solve a problem; it is only necessary to know how to rate potential solutions. To apply the technology it is necessary to write an evaluation function and a function to code solutions. These functions are then called by the standard, existing genetic system. Consequently, working prototypes can be developed in as little as one week. A disadvantage is that the technique is very computationally intensive. For complex problems the system may need to run for many hours or even days on a PC-class computer. Large, complex problems may require the availability of a fast Workstation-class computer."

Computer Chess and Draughts/Checkers

Deep Blue.

Chinook. "It is the World Man-Machine Champion checkers program, the first computer program to win a human world championship. This feat is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records."

Steve Pribut's Chess Page.

Computer Draughts & Checkers Page.

Scientific American Presents Feature Article Computers, Games and the Real World November 1998. "More than just competing with people, game-playing machines complement human thinking by offering alternative methods to solving problems"

Moxon's Master, by Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce.

Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy Logic and Neurofuzzy resources, by  the Image, Speech and Intelligent Systems (ISIS) research group which is part of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

A brief course in Fuzzy Logic and Fuzzy Control, by the Fuzzy Logic Laboratorium Linz-Hagenberg, provides a very good tutorial, by P. Bauer, S. Nouak and R. Winkler.

Fuzzy Systems - a Tutorial, by James F. Brul・ a very brief tutorial on fuzzy logic systems.

Elkan C. 1993, "The paradoxical success of fuzzy logic," Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence Conference (MIT and AAAI Press) pp. 698- 703. This is a controversial attempt to show that fuzzy logic necessarily collapses into Boolean logic by proving that the axiomatization of fuzzy logic, proposed by Gaines, is inconsistent with valuations over a propositional system if truth values other than zero or one are allowed. The paper contains several questionable points, which are correctly criticised in two sound replies by Enrique Ruspini and by Didier Dubois and Henri Prade available at ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/ai/areas/fuzzy/doc/elkan/response.txt.

North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society.

Applications of Fuzzy Set Theory, by Cosmin Radu Ralph Wilkerson.

Fuzzy Logic Annotated Bibliography lists some online articles, but it is not updated.

Neural Networks

A Basic Introduction To Neural Networks. Very brief, good presentation.

Usenet newsgroup: comp.ai.neural-nets. FAQ for Neural Networks, by W. S. Sarle, very thorough, quite technical, with plenty of additional information on other sites and bibliographic indications. Essential.

Neural Networks, Connectionist Systems, and Neural Systems. From CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository.

Neural Nets. By Kevin Gurney.

Home Page of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The PNNL provides a gateway to many other resources on-line dedicated to ANNs.

What is an Artificial Neural Network?

Neural Networks. Introductory slides with further resources.

AI and Neural Nets, by Aaron Sloman.

An Introduction to Neural Networks, by L. Smith, a quick, interesting and reliable introduction to the topic.

Neural Networks, by C. Stergiou and D. Siganos, another very good introduction, longer than Smith’s.

Elements of Neural Computation, by V. Honavar, not truly on-line but a lot of downloadable material.

Dawson, M. R. W. and Shamanski, K. S. 1994, "Connectionism, Confusion, and Cognitive Science", Journal of Intelligent Systems (4), pp. 215-262. This is a detailed survey of the crucial difficulties affecting connectionism in cognitive science.

Minsky M. 1990, "Logical vs. Analogical or Symbolic vs. Connectionist or Neat vs. Scruffy" in P. H. Winston (ed), Artificial Intelligence at MIT, Expanding Frontiers, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press), reprinted in AI Magazine, 1991. Minsky, one of the historical fathers of Strong-AI and a radical opposer of old-fashioned ANNs, holds that symbolic and connectionist approaches to AI should be combined together to create more efficient machines. The paper is still strongly mimetic.

Connectionism

Introduction to Connectionism.

Connectionism, a Short Reading List.

A Brief History of Connectionism, by David A. Medler.

Artificial Intelligence and Connectionism: Some Philosophical Implications, by Ivan M.Havel.

Connectionism and the Language of Thought, by Murat Aydede.

Connectionism,Confusion and Cognitive Science, by Michael R.W. Dawson & Kevin S. Shamanski. This is the HTML version of a paper that appeared in The Journal Of Intelligent Systems, 1994.

Connectionism, Psychology and Science, by George Oliphant.

Some Myths of Connectionism, by Istv疣 S. N. Berkeley.

Parallel Computing

High Performance Computation Centre, University of Southampton contains, among many other documents, a very valuable, brief introduction to HPC, called "An introductory 1 hour lecture on HPC".

CRPC Home Page. The Center for Research on Parallel Computation is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center established in 1989 to promote parallel computing systems technology. The home page contains some useful FAQs, including a very brief "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Parallel Computation But Were Afraid To Ask" (teacher's and student's version).

Introduction To Parallel Programming Presentation, is a brief, graphic presentation, divided into four sections: High Performance Computing, Serial Computers, Parallel Computers, Programming Examples.

Designing and Building Parallel Programs, by Ian Foster, provides a comprehensive introduction to the techniques and tools used to write parallel programs. It incorporates the content of a textbook published by Addison-Wesley. Although the author rightly emphasises that "parallel programming, like most engineering activities, is best learned by doing. Practical experience is essential!", the first part, called "Concepts", providing a thorough discussion of parallel algorithm design, performance analysis and program construction is certainly the most interesting for readers of this book.

Computer Science Parallel Processing Courseware, by Steve Hurley, contains lecture notes from two undergraduate courses on parallel processing. The introductory course is very clear and accessible even with a modest mathematical background.

Computational Science - Parallel Processing Tutorial and Educational Materials, Syracuse University, if you need any other documents, this web service lists educational source materials for a computational science course, organized according to topic area.

Computational Science Education, from NHSE.

Distributed Computing : An Overview .

Parallel Computing Works, by Geoffrey C. Fox, Roy D. Williams and Paul C. Messina. "This book describes work done at the Caltech Concurrent Computation Program, Pasadena, California. This project ended in 1990 but the work has been updated in key areas until early 1994. The book also contains links to some current projects."

Internet Parallel Computing Archive, by Dave Beckett, an excellent starting point for any further research on parallel computing.

IEEE Computer Society: ParaScope a listing of parallel computing sites, by David A. Bader, very thorough, detailed and well-organised.

Nan's Parallel Computing Page contains links related to parallel computing. It is a good starting point if one is interested in supercomputing.

NPAC Technical Report SCCS-265 Prospects for Parallel Computing 1992. It is interesting to compare this document with the following

Basic Issues and Current Status of Parallel Computing---1995.

When I wrote the following paragraph (pp. 181-2) I was not aware of any implemented project that was actually relying on the possibility of "harnessing the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers" to achieve its computational tasks

In a world more and more pervaded by digital networks, it is to be hoped that PPCs [Parallel Processing Computers] will be able to take advantage of the growing distributed computational power that is increasingly becoming available. It is already possible to devise a networked computer as a PPC, rather than just a dumb terminal. Distributed computing and the possibility of concentrating computational resources on important computational problems is one of the next crucial challenges for ICT. PPCs address the possibility of scaling up some computational problems (solving bigger problems in the same time) rather than just speeding them up (solving the same problems in less time). This means widening the possibilities for computational applications. I remarked in chapter one that numerical models and simulations are a fundamental complement to theory and experimentation in engineering and scientific research and have also become crucial for the development of entertainment products. Computational inquiry is more and more often employed in the study or reproduction of all sorts of phenomena that are either too complex (e.g. because of the time scale), expensive or dangerous to be dealt with directly, through realistic physical experiments. The number of fields of application is constantly increasing, and include what have been identified, within the HPCC project, as the "Grand Challenges" fundamental problems in science and engineering, with potentially broad social, political, and scientific impact, that can be advanced by applying high performance (including massively parallel) computing resources.

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ does what is described above. "It is a scientific experiment that will harness the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth."
"The UC Berkeley SETI team has discovered that there are already thousands of computers that might be available for use. Most of these computers sit around most of the time with toasters flying across their screens accomplishing absolutely nothing and wasting electricity to boot. This is where SETI@home (and you!) come into the picture. The SETI@home project hopes to convince you to allow us to borrow your computer when you aren't using it and to help us "...search out new life and new civilizations." We'll do this with a screen saver that can go get a chunk of data from us over the internet, analyze that data, and then report the results back to us. When you need your computer back, our screen saver instantly gets out of the way and only continues it's analysis when you are finished with your work."

(Computational) Complexity

Computability and Complexity.Very brief introduction.

What is Complexity? - The philosophy of complexity per se with application to some examples in evolution.

Complexity Classes.

Complexity - Some Resources.

A List of Papers on Computational Complexity at Higher Types. A bibliography. All papers in this list are very technical.

Quantum Computing

The Net Advance of Physics, by Norman Hugh Redington and Karen R・Keck, if you wish to revise your physics, this is a useful gateway to papers, tutorials and information.

The Promise of Quantum Computing. A Survey of Quantum Computing for the Non-specialist, a very useful page, containing two introductory articles: "The weirdest computer of all", The Economist; "The Square Root of NOT", American Scientist.

BYTE Magazine - April 1996 - Cover Story - When Silicon Hits Its Limits, What's Next?

Beyond Bits, by Tom Siegfried.

A Brief History of Quantum Computing, by Simon Bone and Matias Castro.

A Short Introduction to Quantum Computing.

Quantum Computing. A very good introduction paper be Steane (In postscript).

Quantum Information and Computing, introductory lecture notes and resources by John Preskill.

Quantum Information Theory. "This web site is intended to present Quantum Information Theory at an undergraduate level. It is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of quantum mechanics. The basics of classical information theory are presented, but for greater depth please see the references."

Quantum Information/Computation/Cryptography page at Oxford (alternative site) contains three excellent introductions to quantum cryptography, quantum computation and quantum communication. Certainly one of the best sources for philosophy students.

Quantum Computing Page, by John Aaron Smolin, a good starting point, this site also contains a collection of articles both technical and introductory.

Quantum computation: a tutorial, by Samuel L. Braunstein, is "a tutorial on how quantum mechanics can be used to improve computation". Special attention is paid to Shor algorithm. It requires a good background of mathematical knowledge, though it is slightly less demanding than the following.

Quantum Physics and Computers, by Adriano Barenco

Quantum Circuit Complexity, by Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, the analysis of a Universal Quantum Turing Machine is of philosophical interest.

Collection of Quantum Computation Papers is an online database of technical papers relating to quantum computation, maintained by I. Chuang and R. Laflamme.

Algorithms for Quantum Computation [...], by Peter W. Shor. How QC could solve factoring problems. Difficult.

Expert Systems, Knowledge Engineering and Formal Ontologies

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, by Carol E. Brown and Daniel E. O'Leary. Very brief, good introduction to the topic. If you are looking for a full tutorial then see

Databases and Artificial Intelligence 3 Artificial Intelligence Segment, by Alison Cawsey, a on-line course on artificial intelligence and Expert systems theory.

What is an Ontology? by Tom Gruber.

Ontology, from Principia Cybernetica Web.

A Glossary of Ontology Terminology.

Standard Ontologies.

Ontology resources by Doug Skuce, contains a useful bibliography, compiled by Mark Johnson.

Buffalo Ontology Site is the site for a philosophical analysis of ontology on the web. Organised by Barry Smith, it is not to be missed by anyone interested in the topic. It contains three main sections on Contemporary Ontology History of Ontology and Ontological Engineering, with further links.

Ontology resources, by Enrico Franconi, is another excellent starting point, although not as philosophically oriented as the Buffalo's site.

TOP (The Ontology Page), by KR&R, Inc., oddly enough, the most interesting section is hidden behind the word "ontologies" (see The Ontology Page Definitions), and contains T. Gruber's note "What is an Ontology?", N. Guarino's and P. Giaretta's paper "Ontologies and Knowledge Bases: Towards a Terminological Clarification" and the KR'96 panel on "Ontologies: What Are They, and Where's The Research?". Gruber's paper is also available at http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html.

Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory home page. "The KSL is an artificial intelligence research laboratory within the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. Current work focuses on knowledge representation for sharable engineering knowledge bases and systems, computational environments for modeling physical devices, architectures for adaptive intelligent systems, and expert systems for science and engineering.". KSL is a leading centre, which has developed Ontolingua, an ontological editor to write canonical ontologies. The site provides, among the many useful documents, a list of "Sites Relevant to Ontologies and Knowledge Sharing", where you can also find the "ANSI Ad Hoc Group on Ontology Standards Page", then the "Email Lists for the ARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort Page", "How to Create an Ontology", which is a user-friendly, step-by-step, brief tutorial on how to construct an ontology, and a finally a useful Ontolingua-oriented "Glossary of Ontology Terms".

Agent Communication with Multiple Ontologies, by Hideaki Takeda, Kenji Iino, and Toyoaki Nishida.

WAVE - Web Analysis and Visualization Environment. Funded by Intel Corporation, the goal of the WAVE project is to create an advanced NIDR (Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval) system to generate conceptualisations and ontologies for sharing local (Intranet) and global (Internet) information spaces. "The project seeks to address the following research question: "What is the appropriate architecture for a digital library?" (from the home page).

Cycorp, Inc. The beginning of formal ontologies. "Cycorp, Inc. [...] was founded in January 1995 by AI pioneer Doug Lenat as a spin-off from MCC, Cycorp is continuing the development of the Cyc project, initiated by Lenat at MCC in 1984. [...] The Cyc system comprises a very large, multi-contextual knowledge base, an inference engine, a set of interface tools, and a number of special-purpose application modules, running on a variety of platforms. The knowledge base is built upon a core of approximately 400,000 hand-entered assertions (or "rules") designed to capture a large portion of what we normally consider consensus knowledge about the world. (For example, Cyc knows that trees are usually outdoors, that once people die they stay dead, and that a glass filled with milk will be rightside-up, not upside-down.) This foundation enables Cyc to address effectively a broad range of otherwise intractable software problems.".

Towards Principled Core Ontologies, by Andre Valente and Joost Breuker, is an interesting methodological article, highly readable. The medical and legal ontologies under discussion have a philosophical value as well.

CLIPS, an ES shell. "CLIPS is a productive development and delivery expert system tool which provides a complete environment for the construction of rule and/or object based expert systems. CLIPS is being used by over 5,000 users throughout the public and private community including: all NASA sites and branches of the military, numerous federal bureaus, government contractors, universities, and many companies."

JESS, a clone of the core of the CLIPS expert system shell. Here you can see how Jess solves a classic AI planning exercise, "Monkey and Bananas": "A monkey in a room full of chests, keys, and ladders, along with some hidden fruit, is trying to satisfy her hunger, equipped only with a set of heuristics for manipulating objects. Push a button to find your favorite fruit. The flashing lights correspond to events within the system: rules firing, facts being asserted, etc."

SHYSTER, developed by James Popple, is a case-based legal ES.

Robotics, Cybernetics and Artificial Agents

Get A Grip On Robotics, an animated guide to robotics, by Craig Rosa, Eric Schwartz, and Gustavo Tobon, three industrial robots employed at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California.

Robotics, by Nora Perez.

Robotics FAQ Table of Contents, by Kevin Dowling. This is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for the internet robotics newsgroups comp.robotics.misc and comp.robotics.research. It is well-written and full of information.

A Dictionary of Robotics Terminology.

Internet Robotics Resources, by Jason L. Almeter, at Indiana University's Department of Computer Science.

American Society for Cybernetics.

List and Analysis of Web Robots, compiled by Elizabeth Felt and Jane Scales.

The Web Robots Pages.

Web Robots, an informative article by Jerry Ablan.

UC Berkeley: Robotics and Intelligent Machines Lab.

Intelligent Software Agents, resources on the topic, by Sverker Janson, Swedish Institute of Computer Science.

The Man-machine and Artificial Intelligence, by Bruce Mazlish. This essay is adapted from Chapter 3 of his book The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines (New Haven: Yale UP, 1993).

Franklin, S. and Graesser, A. (1996), "Is it an Agent, or just a Program?: A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agents" Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, (Berlin: Springer-Verlag). "The advent of software agents gave rise to much discussion of just what such an agent is, and of how they differ from programs in general. Here we propose a formal definition of an autonomous agent which clearly distinguishes a software agent from just any program. We also offer the beginnings of a natural kinds taxonomy of autonomous agents, and discuss possibilities for further classification. Finally, we discuss subagents and multiagent systems.". A good article, well documented and clearly written.

What's an Agent, Anyway? A Sociological Case Study, an article by Lenny Foner on Julia.

Agent-Based Engineering, the Web, and Intelligence, by Charles J. Petrie.The print version of this paper appeared in the December 1996 issue of IEEE Expert.

Literature about search services, by Traugott Koch.

Romantic Cyborgs: Technology, Authorship, and the Politics of Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, by Klaus Benesch.

Artificial Life

ALife Bibliography, Artificial Life Bibliography of On-line Publications, Compiled by Ezequiel Di Paolo, essential for an research in the field.

Philosophy of Artificial Life a bibliography by Brian Keeley.

Artificial Life Definitions.

An Introduction to Artificial Life, by Moshe Sipper.

Artificial Life, includes "A brief definition of artificial life".

Patterns, Programs, and Links for Conway's Game of Life. A list of resources of information on Conway's Game of Life.

The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems.

Artificial life needs a real epistemology, by H. H. Pattee.

Computer Technology and Evolution: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Life, by Klaus Mainzer, University of Augsburg

Other Web Resources for Chapter Five

R. Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Cartesian rationalism is often the beate noir of all anti-AI attacks, yet Descartes’ philosophy, with its strong dualism, its defence of innate knowledge and natural light, the identification of human mental life with thinking activity and the negation of even animal intelligence could not be farer from supporting the possibility of artificial intelligence.

R.U.R., excerpt from the original play by Karel Capek (1920).

Rossums Universal Robots,by Jobst Schmalenbach, a very good introduction to Capek's work, with nice pictures.

Computer Characters in the Movies, by Roberto Tietzmann.

Gender and Utopia: The Roles of the Dual Woman in Metropolis.

The False Woman in Metropolis and Blade Runner.

The Implications of the Dual Woman in Metropolis.

Imagining Futures, Dramatizing Fears: The Portrayal of Technology in Literature and Film, by Daniel Chandler.

Cybercinema. "An Interactive Site Devoted to the History of Computers and Artificial Intelligence in Film".

"The man called Angus emptied his coffee-cup and regarded her with mild and patient eyes. Her own mouth took a slight twist of laughter as she resumed, "I suppose you've seen on the hoardings all about this `Smythe's Silent Service'? Or you must be the only person that hasn't. Oh, I don't know much about it, it's some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: `Press a Button--A Butler who Never Drinks.' `Turn a Handle--Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.' You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are making it all for that little imp whom I knew down in Ludbury. I can't help feeling pleased the poor little chap has fallen on his feet; but the plain fact is, I'm in terror of his turning up any minute and telling me he's carved his way in the world --as he certainly has."" The Innocence of Father Brown, The Invisible Man.

Conclusion

SPAN. Non profit organization in the USA, dedicated to the creation of an effective national suicide prevention strategy.

Philosophy and Computing - A Webliography - Copyright ｩ 1999 Luciano Floridi