http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/10/11/what-happens-when-everyone-owns-a-telescope/ Daniel Lemire's blog is about life in academia, research in Computer Science, wondering how we can reconcile fast databases and algorithms with the informal and asemantic nature of the world around us. It is broadcasted from Montreal (Canada). Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:18:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/10/11/what-happens-when-everyone-owns-a-telescope/comment-page-1/#comment-49500 Peter Turney Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:51:45 +0000 http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/10/11/what-happens-when-everyone-owns-a-telescope/#comment-49500 My interpretation of Dijkstra is that a computer is an instrument for looking into another world that can only be glimpsed dimly without a computer, the world of fractals, large matrices, high dimensions, advanced compression algorithms, public key cryptography, and turbo codes. The fact that millions of people have computers is only slightly relevant to Dijkstra's point, as I see it. My interpretation of Dijkstra is that a computer is an instrument for looking into another world that can only be glimpsed dimly without a computer, the world of fractals, large matrices, high dimensions, advanced compression algorithms, public key cryptography, and turbo codes. The fact that millions of people have computers is only slightly relevant to Dijkstra’s point, as I see it.

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