The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the eye of the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity. The […]
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits. John C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, The Julian Press, Inc., […]
LISP has jokingly been called “the most intelligent way to misuse a computer.” I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts. — Edsger Dijkstra. LISP was the world’s first elegant language, […]
Introduction: A Musico-Logical Offering. The book opens with the story of Bach’s Musical Offering. Bach made an impromptu visit to King Frederick the Great of Prussia, and was requested to improvise upon a theme presented by the King. His improvisations formed the basis of that great work. The Musical Offering and its story form a […]
The beginning. . . . If I am only a story now, I must have a beginning. Shall I begin by being born? Is that a beginning? I could begin with that silver glove you wear; that silver glove, and the ball . . . Yes, I will start with Little Belaire, and how I […]
The UNIX story begins with Ken Thompson’s work on a cast-off PDP-7 minicomputer in 1969. He and the others who soon joined him had one overriding objective: to create a computing environment where they themselves could comfortably and effectively pursue their own work-programming research. The result is an operating system of unusual simplicity, generality, and, […]
Abstract: Simulated on a computer, PURR-PUSS is a machine that can be taught. When connected to a robot body in the real world, ‘she’ can learn on her own or with the help of a human teacher. Her experience is stored in small ‘pieces’ which are used for prediction, decision and novelty-seeking. Unlike other products […]
Abstract – In a little known report written in 1945, A.M. Turing made a detailed proposal for the construction of a stored program computer. Although sharing some ideas with von Neumann’s draft report of the same year, Turing’s proposal contained a wide range of novel and formative concepts. These include subroutines, the stack and a […]
In the six years that the PDP-11 has been on the market, more than 20,000 units in 10 different models have been sold. Although one of the original system design goals was a broad range of models, the actual range of 500 to 1 (in cost and memory size) has exceeded the design goals. The […]
At the heart of this book (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind) is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3,000 years ago and […]