Life in Code and Digits: When Shannon met Turing

Claude Shannon (1916–2001) is regarded as the father of information theory. Alan Turing (1912–1954) is known as the father of computer science. In the year 1943, Shannon and Turing were both at Bell Labs in New York City, although working on different projects. They had discussions together, including about Turing’s “Universal Machine,” a type of computational brain. Turing seems quite surprised that in a sea of code and computers, Shannon envisioned the arts and culture as an integral part of the digital revolution – a digital DNA of sorts. What was dreamlike in 1943, is today a reality, as digital representation of all media, accounts for millions of “cultural things” and massive music collections. The early connections that Shannon made between the arts, information, and computing, intuit the future that we are experiencing today. This paper considers foundational aspects of the digital revolution, the current state, and the possible future. It examines how digital life is increasingly becoming part of real life for more and more people around the world, especially with respect to the arts, culture, and heritage.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Tula Giannini

Jonathan P. Bowen

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 51-58

Affiliations

[0001]Dean and Professor

School of Information

Pratt Institute

New York, USA

http://mysite.pratt.edu/~giannini/

[0002]Professor of Computing

School of Engineering

London South Bank University

London, UK

http://www.jpbowen.com

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.9

SO-VID: 866c259a-1461-4351-9036-030824d58d8c

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2017)

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 11 – 13 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.9

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

5. REFERENCES

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J. P. Bowen 2012 Alan Turing A. Robinson The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery Thames and Hudson 270 275
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J. von Neumann 1958 The Computer and the Brain. Yale University Press
S. Wolfram 2002 A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] D. Bergamini 1965 Mathematics. Life Science Library, Time-Life International

[2] T. Blyth 2014 Information Age: Six networks that changed the world. Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers

[3] N. Bostrom 2014 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press

[4] J. P. Bowen 2012 Alan Turing A. Robinson The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery Thames and Hudson 270 275

[5] J. P. Bowen 2016 Alan Turing: Virtuosity and visualisation Bowen et al 2016 197 204 DOI:10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.40

[6] J. P. Bowen 2017 Alan Turing: Founder of Computer Science J. P. BowenZ. LiuZ. Zhang Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems: Second International School, sEtSS 2016 Chongqing, China March 28 April 2 2016 Springer, LNCS 10215 1 15 DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-56841-61

[7] J. P. BowenG. DiproseN. Lambert 2016 EVA London 2016: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts BCS, eWiC. http://www.bcs.org/ewic/eva2016

[8] J. P. BowenT. Giannini 2014 Digitalism: the new realism? K. NgJ. P. BowenS. McDaid EVA London 2014: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts. BCS, eWiC, 324 331 DOI:10.14236/ewic/eva2014.38

[9] J. P. BowenT. Giannini 2016 From analogue to digital in literature and art Bowen et al 2016 14 DOI:10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.1

[10] A. ButterfieldG. Ekembe 2016 A Dictionary of Computer Science 7^th edition Oxford University Press

[11] M. Cobb 2015 Life’s Greatest Secrets: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code. Profile Books

[12] B. J. Copeland 2004 The Essential Turing. Oxford University Press

[13] B. J. Copeland 2012 Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age. Oxford University Press

[14] B. J. Copeland 2017 Intelligent machinery. In Copeland et al 2017 chapter 25 265 275

[15] B. J. CopelandJ. P. BowenM. SprevakR. J. Wilson, et al 2017 The Turing Guide. Oxford University Press. http://tinyurl.com/TheTuringGuide

[16] B. J. CopelandD. Proudfoot 1999 Alan Turing’s forgotten ideas in computer science Scientific American 280 99 103 April

[17] S. Dasgupta 2016 Computer Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press

[18] Engineered Arts RoboThespian. Engineered Arts UK. https://www.engineeredarts.co.uk/robothespian/ 4 April 2017

[19] S. Filippini-FantoniJ. P. Bowen 2008 Mobile multimedia: Reflections from ten years of practice L. TallonK. Walker Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience. AltaMira 79 96

[20] T. GianniniJ. P. Bowen 2016 Curating digital life and culture: Art and information. Bowen et al 2016 237 244 DOI:10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.46

[21] I. HargittaiM. Hargittai 2017 New York Scientific: A culture of inquiry, knowledge, and learning. Oxford University Press

[22] S. Hickey 2014 RoboThespian: The first commercial robot that behaves like a person The Guardian 17 August https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/17/robothespian-engineered-arts-robot-human-behaviour 10 April 2017

[23] A. Hodges 1983/2012 Alan Turing: The Enigma Simon and Schuster / Princeton University Press

[24] M. A. Hoy 2010 From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics. Electronic Theses and Dissertations University of California Berkeley USA http://escholarship.org/uc/item/25f4v730 3 January 2017

[25] I. James 2009 Claude Elwood Shannon 30 April 1916 - 24 February 2001. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 55 257 265 DOI:10.1098/rsbm.2009.0015x

[26] A. Liversidge 1987 Profile of Claude Shannon Omni 64 66 August

[27] A. Mitchell 2016 Younger adults more likely than their elders to prefer reading news. Pew Research Center 6 October http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/06/younger-adults-more-likely-than-their-elders-to-prefer-reading-news/ 4 April 2017

[28] D. McCandless 2012 Information is Beautiful. Collins

[29] S. Mukherjee 2016 IBM Workers to Use Watson Supercomputer to Find Cancer Treatments Fortune 11 October http://fortune.com/2016/10/11/ibm-watson-empovees-cancer-drugs/ 5 April 2017

[30] N. Negroponte 1995 Being Digital. Hodder & Stoughton

[31] S. RendgenJ. Wiedemann 2012 Information Graphics Taschen

[32] Reuters 2017 A robot-actor stuns London audiences in a new play. Reuters 13 March http://www.reuters.com/video/2017/03/13/a-robot-actor-stuns-london-audiences-in?videoId=371294101 4 April 2017

[33] D. Rooney 2016 Mathematics: How it shaped our world Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers

[34] C. E. Shannon 1937 A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits. Master’s thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA 10 August http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11173/34541425-MIT.pdt 4 April 2017

[35] C. E. Shannon 1938 A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 57 12 713 723 DOI:10.1109/T-AIEE.1938.5057767

[36] C. E. Shannon 1940 An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics. PhD thesis, Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/11174 4 April 2017

[37] C. E. Shannon 1948 A mathematical theory of communication The Bell System Technical Journal 27 379 423 623 656 July October DOI:10.1002/Í.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x

[38] C. E. Shannon 1949 Communication in the presence of noise Proceedings of the IRE 37 1 10 21 January DOI:10.1109/JRPROC.1949.232969

[39] C. E. Shannon 1950 Programming a computer for playing chess Philosophical Magazine 41 256 275

[40] C. E. ShannonJ. McCarthy 1956 Automata Studies. Princeton University Press

[41] J. SoniR. Goodman 2017 A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age Simon & Schuster

[42] I. Stewart 2012 Codes, communications, and computers: Information theory chapter 15 265 282 17 Equations that Changed the World. Profile Books

[43] A. M. Turing 1938 The purpose of ordinal logics Systems of logic based on ordinals: a dissertation PhD thesis, Princeton University USA

[44] A. M. Turing 1948 Intelligent Machinery. Report, Mathematics Division National Physical Laboratory UK http://www.alanturing.net/intelligentmachinery/

[45] A. M. Turing 1950 Computing machinery and intelligence Mind 59 236 433 460 October DOI:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433

[46] University of Pittsburgh 2016 School of Computing and Information. YouTube 28 October https://www.voutube.com/watch?v=2¡b9vPA8kvs 30 March 2017

[47] J. von Neumann 1958 The Computer and the Brain. Yale University Press

[48] S. Wolfram 2002 A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media

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