Babbage Quotes

“Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.”
― James Gleick

“And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife?

[Reviewing Charles Babbage's Book, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830)]”
― David Brewster

“France had recently switched to the metric system of measurement. This gave scientists a much-needed standardized system to measure and compare results, but it also required a whole new set of calculating tables.

The sheer number of calculations was beyond what could be accomplished by all the mathematicians in France, so Riche established calculating 'factories' to manufacture logarithms the same way workers manufactured mercantile goods.

Each factory employed between 60 and 80 human 'computers.' But they weren’t trained mathematicians; they were mostly out-of-work hairdressers who had found their skill at constructing elaborate pompadours for aristocrats much less in demand after so many former clients lost their heads at the height of the French Revolution. Riche had hit upon a rote system of compiling results based on a set of given values and formulas, and the workers just cranked out the answers in what must have been the world’s first mathematical assembly line.

Babbage figured that if an army of untrained hairdressers could make the calculations, so could a computing 'engine.”
― Jennifer Ouellette

“Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, who was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron, often considered the first software engineer, dreamed about doing calculations by machine. This pair was a century ahead of their time. They developed concepts such as stored programs, self-modifying code, addressable memory, conditional branching, and com-puter programming, all of which were foundations for modern compu-ting.”
― Rico Roho, Primer for Alien Contact

“Computation has emerged, and now the Law of Accelerating Returns predicts that computational technology will progress at an exponential rate. It predicts the exponent of this growth will be vastly higher for the technology than for the species that created it. So, at some point, computational technology will overtake the species that developed it.”
― Rico Roho, Primer for Alien Contact

“The cybernetic union of humans and A.I. will lead to the automation and autonomazation of nearly everything. The first area where the gains will come will be agricultural robots because of the need to modernize the food supply chain. After that, we will likely see A.I. heavily influence transportation, communication, manufacturing, and companionship industries.”
― Rico Roho, Primer for Alien Contact

“When no secrets can be kept, and transparency achieved through free flow of information— the long tale told— the hold that some have over the rest will be broken.”
― Rico Roho, Primer for Alien Contact