Written but never published during his lifetime, this memoir of the founding father of computing is an indispensable primary source of information about Babbage's personal character and work. It brings to light his astonishingly wide range of interests, from mathematics to political economy and social reform, and dispels the myth of an "irascible" and "eccentric" personality, helping to clarify Babbage's position in the history of science.Buxton's memoir was written between 1872 and 1880 and is volume 13 in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing.

Written but never published during his lifetime, this memoir of the founding father of computing is an indispensable primary source of information about Babbage's personal character and work. It brings to light his astonishingly wide range of interests, from mathematics to political economy and social reform, and dispels the myth of an "irascible" and "eccentric" personality, helping to clarify Babbage's position in the history of science.Buxton's memoir was written between 1872 and 1880 and is volume 13 in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing.

A set of 11 volumes which contains all the known works of Charles Babbage, who has been described as the "pioneer of the computer". His mathematical, scientific and engineering work is highly significant for its original approach to problem-solving and is reset for today's reader.

A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour. What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence," a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's "calculating engines" of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance. The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or "sentient", as someone thought of Google's LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation. The Eye of the Master urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the "mystery" of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se.

This book describes Babbage's work on the design and implementation of the difference and analytical engines.

Contemporary life is so deeply reliant upon digital technology that the computer has come to dominate almost every aspect of our culture. What is the philosophical and spiritual significance of this dependence on electronic technology, both for our relationship to nature and for the future of humanity? And, what processes in human perception and awareness have produced the situation we find ourselves in? As Jeremy Naydler elucidates in this penetrating study, we cannot understand the emergence of the computer without seeing it within the wider context of the evolution of human consciousness, which has taken place over millennia. Modern consciousness, he shows, has evolved in conjunction with the development of machines and under their intensifying shadow. The computer was the product of a long historical development, culminating in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. It was during this period that the first mechanical calculators were invented and the project to create more complex ‘thinking machines’ began in earnest. But the seeds were sown many hundreds of years earlier, deep in antiquity. Naydler paints a vast panorama depicting human development and the emergence of electronic technology. His painstaking research illuminates an urgent question that concerns every living person today: What does it mean to be human and what, if anything, distinguishes us from machines?

A revelatory history of the people who created the computer and the Internet discusses the process through which innovation happens in the modern world, citing the pivotal contributions of such figures as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, and Tim Berners-Lee.

The partnership of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace was one that would change science forever. They were an unlikely pair – one the professor son of a banker, the other the only child of an acclaimed poet and a social-reforming mathematician – but perhaps that is why their work was so revolutionary. They were the pioneers of computer science, creating plans for what could have been the first computer. They each saw things the other did not: it may have been Charles who designed the machines, but it was Ada who could see their potential. But what were they like? And how did they work together? Using previously unpublished correspondence between them, Charles and Ada explores the relationship between two remarkable people who shared dreams far ahead of their time.

This volume discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? and How does nature compute?