The concepts of what computers could become pre-dated the evolution of the mutational technologies that actually made computers feasible. These concepts arose as ideas in the minds of prescient thinkers and provided nourishment to the tenuous social ecosystems into which the computers emerged, quite similar to the Christian concept of the word made flesh. The philosophical underpinnings were conceivable even though the means to effect the concepts had not yet arrived. Perhaps the first stone of the foundation was found in the concepts of mathematics.

Recent research, in particular by George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez, in Where Mathematics Come From, has revealed the interesting probability that the human capability to deal with mathematics, starting with our ability to distinguish and manipulate numbers, actually derives from our physical motor skills. The theory holds that the capability of the human brain to manipulate numbers follows from our ability to manipulate objects with our hands and feet. From this facility for manipulation of objects, the human brain subsequently extended the ability to also deal with the manipulation of numbers and then with more abstract concepts. This metaphorical capability is also closely aligned with language.

A refinement on the concept of the mechanical computing machine that pushed it more in the direction of today’s computers was the definition of the Turing machine. In 1936, Alan Turing published a paper, On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, in which he described a computation process that was directly applicable to what would become stored program computers. Specifically, Turing described a model of computing that was built on the conception of a moving tape divided into cells. Each cell contained the parameters that completely specified a state of the machine. By moving to successive cells, the machine could be made to move from one state to the next state. The tape, in turn, could be written on and moved in both forward and reverse directions. The end result was a completely constrained computational sequence, an incarnation of a finite state machine. As we have noted, the Turing machine pre-dates the computer as we know it today. Its importance was in establishing a model of a computing process. The true precursor to the modern computer was conceptualized by John von Neumann.

John von Neumann was something of a modern renaissance man. He was responsible for world-shaping developments in a number of fields, most notably in mathematics. However, perhaps his most memorable discovery, certainly as far as this book is concerned, was his work in automaton theory and specifically his specification of a self-replicating machine. This machine has an eerie similarity to the operational characteristics of the DNA molecule, together with its supporting infrastructure found in the living cell. What’s intriguing about this is the timing; von Neumann’s architecture was published almost a decade before Crick and Watson published their discovery of the DNA molecule and its double helix structure. Moreover, after the presentation of the structure of DNA, it was another several decades before the interaction of the molecule with the various protein interactions through which it works became fairly well understood. Only recently has it become moderately well understood how DNA functions as a self-replicating machine in a manner well characterized by von Neumann’s specifications.

Von Neumann’s self-replicating machine was defined with two parts, each a distinct machine in its own right. The two machines were termed a universal computer and a universal constructor. The purpose of the constructor was to follow a sequence of commands from the computer and, using raw materials at its disposal, construct a perfect replica of itself and of the universal computer. The program from the universal computer (parent) was then loaded into the new computer (child). Thus, the new machine would be instilled with the goal of replicating itself via

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