Computer Science 116 The Computational Universe Spring 2007

Princeton University Computer Science Department

Readings

• Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, Rodney Brooks (2002) -- pp 12-21, pp 32-51. [NB: On p. 32, "1992" should in fact be "1982"]

• Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, Rodney Brooks (2002) -- pp 99-126.
• "Computer Recreations: The cellular automaton offers a model of the world and a world unto itself", Brian Hayes, Scientific American, March 1984
• Conway's Game of Life.

• None.

• Turing Award goes to female for first time, The Mercury News, Feb 21, 2007.
• Data Miners, Daniel Franklin, Time, Global Business/Technology Bonus Section, Dec. 15, 2002
• Math Will Rock Your World, BusinessWeek, Cover Story, Jan. 23, 2006 [NB: This article has a persistent typo; "math" should be "algorithms"]
• Hypersearching the Web, Scientific American, June 1999
• Craig Kaplan's explanation of the halting problem.

• None.

Week 6 through Spring Break:

• Schneider et al, Invitation to Computer Science 4th Ed, pp 156-178 (up through adders).

• The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing, Martin Davis (2000) -- [Boole's version of Clarke's proof of the existence of God]
• Schneider et al, Invitation to Computer Science 4th Ed, pp 179-183 (multiplexors...)
• Computer Recreations: On the finite-state machine, a minimal model of mousetraps, ribosomes, and the human soul, Brian Hayes, Scientific American, December 1983.

• The Multitasking Generation, Claudia Wallis, Time, Cover Story, March 27, 2006
• China launches new generation Internet, Liu Baijia, China Daily, December 27, 2004

• Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program? John R. Searle, Scientific American, January 1990.