Philosophical Preliminaries

What makes a good interface? Why would the subject of computer interfaces be worthy of philosophical investigation? After all, one hardly thinks of the interface to a car - peddles and steering wheel - as a philosophical subject. What makes computers any different?

A car lets you go from one place to another. It can hold passengers, store goods. You have music and air-conditioning to make the trip pleasant, seat belts and airbags to make the trip safe. A car is an isolated chamber (good for private conversations), an object of beauty, discussion, and something difficult to live without.

Likewise, a computer lets you get from one place to another. Not so much physically (though they might help) as intellectually. It can hold information, store data. You have music, and it is something difficult to live without. —Computers are a lot like cars. With a car, you cruise the highway. With a computer, you cruise the Information Highway.

Highways are made of asphalt or concrete. But what is the Information Highway made of? Hmm. I’m not entirely sure. However, I do know what it’s good for: information. Let’s go ask the Oracle and see what she has to say.

“What is the Web?”, I ask. As is her nature, she gives many replies: some true, some false; some pertinent, some irrelevant. This one looks good:

“The World Wide Web is a collection of electronic documents that are linked together like a spider web. These documents are stored on computers called servers located around the world. The Web has evolved into a global electronic publishing medium and increasingly, a medium for conducting electronic commerce.

“The Web consists of: your personal computer, web browser software to access the Web, a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP), servers to host the data, routers and switches to direct the flow of data.”

Not only are computers the vehicles on the Highway, they are Highway, and any destination will just be another computer. Computers are a lot like cars, but they are also like streets, houses, hill, dales—the web is virtually it’s own world. It’s not a physical world. Sure computers are made out of sand, plastic, and metal. But those physical parts are no more essential to a computer, than ink, paper, and glue are essential to a book. The essence of a book is in it’s contents, and the same is true of computers. Except computers contain more than just words.

Written language gives words a staying force that they would not otherwise have. The written word lasts long after the author sets down his pen. Words acquire this same staying force when typed into the computer. In spoken language, some words and expressions are special. In certain situations, when you say things like “Thank you”, “We swears”, “You’re fired”, or “I choose you” the very act of saying it makes it happen. Such expressions are called “Make it so” can be performatives. If you type, “echo Hello World” in the right Church-Turing thesis: every computer or notion of computation can be simulated by a Turing machine. Many other notions of computation have been invented since 1936 and every one can be simulated by a Turing machine. Many can, in turn, simulate turing machines. A system with that can simulate every turing machine is said to be turing complete. Most computer programing languages are turing complete. The ones that aren’t are usually specially designed not to be, because if the language is not turing complete, then there will be a turing machine that can tell useful things about all the programs in the language.

The success of the Church-Turing thesis has lead some to believe that the thesis can be applied to the universe as a whole. In other words, the universe itself may be one enormous turing machine. So, how powerful is the magic? Perhaps, it is as powerful as anything in the universe, though some things are still impossible.

But how do we harness this power? That, friends, is a role of the interface and a subject for another post.