Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation

From: Eray Ozkural exa (examachine_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: 30 Nov 2004 18:47:29 -0800

patty <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message news:<VQ4rd.590978$mD.327332@attbi_s02>...
> Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
>
> > Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message news:<coe8th$tdu$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>...
> >
> >>>The putative difficulty in writing effective software is a more common
> >>>and mundane version of the same thing, IMHO.
> >>
> >>That's actually a quite different problem.
> >>
> >>Computation is the manipulation of representations.
> >
> >
> > I am not sure if that's a good description.
> >
> > This formal symbol manipulation idea got some otherwise ambitious
> > philosophers like Brian Cantwell Smith and gang quite confused.
> >
> > Computers can work on representations, that's true. But it is not
> > necessary that what is being manipulated is "representation".
> >
>
> Can you give us an example of where a computer is *not* manipulating a
> representation ?

Consider the generator of {0,1}* 

--
Eray

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