Risks & Responsibilities

In 1983, A Soviet ballistics officer (Stanislav Petrov) draws the right conclusion -- that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm -- thereby avoiding the happening of a potential nuclear disaster.

In fact, initially Petrov was initially praised for his cool head but later came under criticism and was, for a while, made the scapegoat for the false alarm.

Further investigation, however, found that it was due to either geographical issue or technological faults that satellite had picked up the sun's reflection off the cloud tops and somehow interpreted that as a missile launch. Similarly, Cold War is about ideologies where geography also played an important role. Geographically speaking all enemy territories were within range of the new ICBM's which could launch over 3000miles and hit.

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning satellite system, when the alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.

The alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space -If Petrov would have followed up the signal the issue of cold war would have been severe. The US and the Soviet Union never actually fought each other but tensions between the two remained very strong because America is a democracy and the Soviet Union was communist and moreover distrust between them which arouse after the World War II where they have fought against Hitler together.

Petrov has a gut feeling that the signal was a false alarm. For one reason; the report indicated that only five missiles had been fired. Had the United States been launching an actual nuclear attack, he reasoned, ICBMs would be raining down on them. The other reason being in large part to his lack of faith in the Soviet early-warning system, which he subsequently described as "raw." He reported it as a false alarm to his superiors, and hoped to hell he was right. Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn't do anything to ease the stress of the moment.

References:

1) - http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0926

2) Wikipedia of cold War.

By,

A.PRAVEEN KUMAR,

CH09B0003.

The Space Race(1957-1975) - Risks and Responsibilities

The Cold War (1947–1991), was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945) between the Communist World – primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies – and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. They expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

The Space Race was a mid-to-late twentieth century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US) for supremacy in outer space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national security and symbolic of technological and ideological superiority. The Space Race involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight around the Earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon. It effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite on 4 October 1957, and concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project human spaceflight mission in July 1975.

The Space Race sparked unprecedented increases in spending on education and pure research, which accelerated scientific advancements and led to beneficial spin-off technologies. An unforeseen consequence was that the Space Race contributed to the birth of the environmental movement; the first colour pictures of Earth taken from deep space were used as icons by the movement to show the planet as a fragile "blue marble" surrounded by the blackness of space.

Both nations faced serious challenges and risks that brought their programs to a halt. Both nations had been rushing at full-speed on the Apollo and Soyuz programs, without paying due diligence to growing design and manufacturing problems. The results proved fatal to both pioneering crews.

Likely the worst disaster during the Space Race was the Soviet Union's Nedelin catastrophe in 1960. It happened on 24 October 1960, when Chief Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin gave orders to use improper shutdown and control procedures on an experimental R-16 rocket. The hasty on-pad repairs caused the missile's second stage engine to fire straight onto the full propellant tanks of the still-attached first stage. The resulting explosion, toxic-fuel spill and fire, killed anywhere from 92 to 150 top Soviet military and technical personnel. Marshal Nedelin was vaporized, and his only identifiable remains were his war medals, especially the Gold Star of the Soviet Union. His death was officially explained as an airplane crash. It was also a huge set-back for the rocket's chief designer, Mikhail Yangel, who was trying to unseat Korolyov as the person responsible for the Soviet human spaceflight program. Yangel lived only because he went for a cigarette break in a bunker that was removed from the launch pad, but he would not rival Korolyov during the rest of this period. The Nedelin catastrophe would remain an official secret until 1989, and the survivors of the incident were not allowed to discuss it until 1990, thirty-one years after it occurred.

Technology—advanced greatly during this period. However, the effects of the Space Race went far beyond rocketry, physics, and astronomy. "Space age technology" extended to fields as diverse as home economics and forest defoliation studies, and the push to win the race changed the very nature of science education.

American concerned that they had fallen behind the Soviet Union in the race to space led quickly to a push by legislators and educators for greater emphasis on mathematics and the physical sciences in American schools. The United States' National Defence Education Act of 1958 increased funding for these goals from childhood education through the post-graduate level. To this day over 1,200 American high schools retain their own planetarium installations, a situation unparalleled in any other country and a direct consequence of the Space Race.

The scientists educated through these efforts helped develop technologies that have been adapted for use in the kitchen, in transportation systems, in athletics, and in many other areas of modern life. Dried fruits and ready-to-eat foods (in particular food sterilization and package sealing techniques), stay-dry clothing, and even no-fog ski goggles have their roots in space science. International Space Station in 2010

Today over a thousand artificial satellites orbit earth, relaying communications data around the planet and facilitating remote sensing of data on weather, vegetation, and human movements for the nations who employ them. In addition, much of the micro-technology that fuels everyday activities, from time-keeping to enjoying music, derives from research initially driven by the Space Race.th pioneering crews.

REFERENCES:
Wikipedia..

by
D Sai Prashanth
CH09B015

Science and War in the 20th century

“Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.”
Adolf Hitler’s Reply to Max Planck (President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science) when he tried to petition the Fuhrer to stop the dismissal of scientists on political grounds.

The Fuhrer’s seeming indifference to the welfare of German science and technology, at a time when Germany was in the middle of a huge rearmament program and feverishly preparing for war, from the point of view of the 21^st century,  seems to show an appalling lack of common sense to say the least. But at the time, in the 1930s, the relationship between science and war was quite different from what it is today; so much so that the flaw in Hitler's attitude would have been seen only by the more farsighted. It was however approaching a series of events that would alter it forever- namely World War II, closely followed by the Cold War and its associated conflicts. The Second World War would form a watershed, beyond which the realm of warfare would become completely dependent on scientific advances. So much so that by the end of the Cold War, somewhere between a quarter and a half of scientists and engineers worldwide would be engaged on military projects.

In the first half of the 20^th century many scientists remained wary of cooperating with government, fearful that military need would come to dominate research priorities. For their part, many in the military still failed to recognize the utility of science. James Conant, a chemist and later president of Harvard University, recalled that when, at the outbreak of World War I, the American Chemical Society offered its services to the government, the secretary of war noted that the War Department already had one chemist and did not need more. This attitude prevailed among many in the military even well into World War II.

In the USA,federal funding for science before 1940 was sparse, usually non-existent. In the Politics of Pure Science (1967), Daniel Greenberg writes that “...prior to 1940, not only was there mutual aloofness between the federal government and ... the scientific community, but there were strong feelings on both sides that separation was desirable.

The American scientist Vannevar Bush wrote in 1949 that prior to World War II “Military laboratories were dominated by officers who made it utterly clear that the scientists and engineers employed in these laboratories were of a lower caste of society….[The] senior officers of military services everywhere did not have a ghost of an idea concerning the effects of science on the evolution of techniques and weapons….”   

However, World War II would change all this.

 It was in Britain that the winds of change were first felt. From 1938, plans were laid to identify and allocate scientists to defence work. A ‘Central Register’ for scientists was set up. The university vice-chancellors and the Royal Society submitted lists of qualified scientists to an 'Earmarking Committee', while new graduates were interviewed by representatives of the Register. By late 1939 7000 people had been listed, believed to be some 90 per cent of all the qualified scientists in the country.

In the USA, the mutual mistrust of scientists and the military began to change in 1940. When France fell to the Nazis in May, 1940, a group of American scientists mobilized. They were led by Bush,  then chairman of NACA and president of the Carnegie Institution. With the support of Bush and a number of prominent colleagues, President Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee in June 1940. By mid-1941, Bush had recruited — and the government had funded — some 6,000 physicists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers, a number that grew to 30,000 by the end of the war.

These developments marked a difference between the Second World War and previous conflicts. In the First World War science had certainly played a huge part in chemical synthesis for explosives, poison gas, aeronautics and much more. But in that war scientists had been brought in late. Now experienced academics and new graduates were allocated to all the important areas of defence research, including radar, electronics, aeronautics and so on.

 In World War Two the scientific community was thoroughly mobilised to serve the state for military ends, and this led to the continuing close connection between science and the state in the following decades. [Between 1945 and 1955, research funding in the US rose from $920 million to $3.45 billion, with 80% of all federal R&D funds going to the Department of Defence ]

 Mutual interest in winning the war, reinforced by financial support, permanently linked the military and science in a web of cross-fertilization that continues today. And the exposure of all these scientists to advanced electronics and new techniques was to prove a powerful stimulus on postwar research in many fields.

Govind Menon

CH09B022

References:

1.On Bush-"As We May Think"

2.Science, Politics, and Computers- Cynthia H Null, 1988

3.The Military's Role in Stimulating Science and Technology: The Turning Point- Kathleen Broome Williams, 2010

4.Science and War-Brian Martin

5. The Politics of Pure Science- Daniel Greenberg, 1967

6.www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk

Vision of science and war in the 1930s

All the nations have been involved in wars at some point of time and as time passes all of them have become more powerful and advanced. Now a days all nations have more sophisticated weapons, more advanced defense mechanism, thanks to Science and technology .Science and Technology has made substantial impact on the field of wars and the year 1930s have seen a major advances in technology in warfare.

At the time of WWII, on proposal of Vannevar Bush, President Roosevelt formed a new organization, called the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which would bring together government, military, business, and scientific leaders to coordinate military research and bush as its chairman .This committee led research in developing new weapons bush supervised the Manhattan project and developed the first atomic bomb and thus securing victory of the allies. Bush's work not only helped the Allies win the war, but it changed the way scientific research was done in the U.S. Bush demonstrated that technology was the key to winning a war, and in turn earned a new respect for scientists. Post- war, Bush argued that the nation would still need permanent support for research.In his reply President Roosevelt request he said

“It is my judgment that the national interest in scientific research and scientific education can best be promoted by the creation of a National Research Foundation.”

Nobert Wiener,focussed on the problem of destroying enemy airplanes. He designed the “antiaircraft (AA) predictor” which would characterize an enemy pilot’s zigzagging flight, anticipate his future position, and launch an antiaircraft shell to destroy his plane. The model then emerged as new part of science, the science of regulating systems, CYBERNATICS. Cybernetics is derived from the Greek word for steersman or helmsman, who provides the control system for a boat or ship. The anti-aircraft gun demonstrates the cybernetic principle of feedback. It is information about the results of a process which is used to change the process. The radar provided information about the changes in location of the enemy airplane and this information was used to correct the aiming of the gun .Wiener brought to bear his own established interest in feedback mechanisms, communication technology, and nonlinear processes. Here we track the ontological claims of cybernetics into a collocation of vacuum tubes, resistors and condensers designed to replicate the intentions of a hidden enemy pilot. All the enemies were not alike. To the Americans, British, and Australians, the Japanese soldiers were often thought of a lice, ants, or vermin to be eradicated. They followed the slogan “Kill him or he will kill you”

The three closely related sciences which engaged in calculating the enemy were: Operational research, game theory, and cybernetics. Operational research focused on maximizing the efficiency in locating and destroying German U boats in the North Atlantic and along and along the coast of America. Game theory is the way of analyzing what two opposing forces ought to do when each expected the other to act in a maximally rational way but were ignorant both of the opponent's specific intentions and of the enemy's choice of where to bluff. Weiner divided the enemies into two categories, and regarded them as devils. One was the "Manichean devil" "who is determined on victory and will use any trick of craftiness or dissimulation to obtain this victory." The other, the "Augustinian devil" was characterized by the "evil" of chance and disorder but could not change the rules unlike the “Manichean devil”.

In present times, the role of science and technology, particularly cybernetics, has increased manifold and has made war and science closely related.

References:

·        Cybernetic Warfare: Computers and the Cold War  by C Warfare

·        The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision

·        As we may think

Prajul Bagri

CH09B045

"What was the vision for science and War in the 1930's. Have things changed since then?"

  Technology and science plays a very prominent role during wars, day by day the involvement of science in wars .Not only in wars but also in various fields we are becoming more dependent on technology .But in the 19th century the change is high. During the time of world wars so many new inventions have taken place which led to research and development of new technology.

World War II

The U.S. was not prepared for the Second World War. Little was spent on military research. The military research that was done was done by military personnel and often duplicated between the different branches. By 1940, Bush and other American scientists felt that the country needed a new organization to conduct military research.

On June 12, 1940, Bush met with President Roosevelt and detailed his plan for mobilizing military research. He proposed a new organization he called the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). The committee would bring together government, military, business, and scientific leaders to coordinate military research. Roosevelt quickly agreed and thus the NDRC was created. Bush was made chairman and given a direct line to the White House. In mid-1941, The Office of Scientific Research and Development was set up. The NDRC had been funded by presidential emergency funds and was often short on money. The OSRD was congressionally funded. The NDRC was subsumed under the OSRD as its chief operating unit. Bush became director of the OSRD.

The NDRC and then the OSRD were originally set up to support and augment Army and Navy research, but by the end of the war the OSRD was leading military research. Many useful innovations resulted from OSRD research and development including improvements in radar, the proximity fuse, anti-submarine tactics, and various secret devices for the OSS (the precursor of the CIA). 

The War Ends

By late 1944, Allied victory was inevitable. Bush began to look to the future. He believed that after the war the nation would still need permanent support for research. In March 1945, Bush drafted an article entitled, "Science-The Endless Frontier." He outlined the importance of continued support for research. He called for a National Research Foundation that "should develop and promote a national policy for scientific research and scientific education, should support basic research in nonprofit organizations, should develop scientific talent in American youth by means of scholarships and fellowships, and should by contract and otherwise support long -range research on military matters" (Bush, 28). His dreams for were never fully realized, but in 1950 the National Science Foundation (NSF) was created. The NSF did not quite fulfill Bush's expectations. It was not as powerful as his proposal called for. Nonetheless, the marriage between science and government was secured.

Followed by Bush, here comes Nobert Wiener who coined the term cybernetics, a new science of control mechanisms in which the exchange of information would play a central role. He focused on the problem of destroying enemy airplanes. He designed the “antiaircraft (AA) predictor” which would characterize an enemy pilot’s zigzagging flight, anticipate his future position with the help of Radar, and launch an antiaircraft shell to destroy his plane. The model then emerged as new part of science, the science of control systems, CYBERNETICS.

The scientific research done definitely helped the U.S. and its allies win the war. Bush also changed the way basic scientific research was done in the U.S. From this it is  proved that technology is key to winning a war, also institutionalization of the relationship between government, business, and the scientific community.

References:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html

http://www.ww2sci-tech.org/essays/essay2.html

By

D Sai Prashanth

CH09B015

Vision of Science & War in 1930's

          Since its earliest days, science has been associated with war. The inventors Archimedes and Leonardo turned their talents to the problems of fighting, and since the rise of modern science many individual scientists have steered their investigations towards military purposes. But the orientation of science to war was relatively sporadic until the rise of professionalised science under the auspices of the state beginning in the late 1800s. The process of incorporation of science into the war system was greatly accelerated by the two world wars this century, and especially since World War Two science has become an essential part of military races.

            Untill the beginning of world wars , scientific research was mainly meant for human development and the main funding for research and development were from industries.In USA federal funding for seen before world wars was sparse.American scientist Vannevar Bush wrote that “Military labs were dominated by army officers and they didn't have any idea about science and technology, and the scientists and engineers worked in these labs were considered as a lower caste of society”.During World war 1 many countries realized the importance of science and technology in winning the war.It was German's who dominated in the beginning of the war.They used chlorine from powerful dye industries and they invented many nitrite poisonous gases also.

          In USA the mutual mistrust between scientists and military began to change in 1940.In this year US military formed new organisation called National Defence Research Committee, which was a combination of military,industryand scientific leaders and Vannevar Bush was selected as its chairman.The main intention of NDRC was to develop new kind of weapons for US military.He leaded the Manhattan project and succeded in developing the first atomic bomb. After this success US military funded for more than 4000 scientists.The US authorities realized the role played by scientific research and development in winning the war and president Roosevelt stated “ It is my judgement that the national interest in scientific research and science education can best be promoted by the creation of National Research Foundation”.On realization importance of science in war, the state defence departement continued the connection with scientific research and development.

            War influences not only specific scientific projects but also the whole direction of technological innovation. This in turn influences the ongoing focus of scientific research, which is at all times influenced by current technologies.Nuclear power is a prime example of this interaction. The massive expansion of interest in nuclear science during World War Two was of course due to the interest in making a devastating weapon.Nuclear power was in many ways a spin-off from nuclear weapons programmes, depending on physical facilities such as uranium enrichment built for making weapons grade uranium, on the scientific and engineering skills gained through weapons research and development, and on the political advantage in the early 1950s in associating nuclear technology with peaceful purposes. Once nuclear power projects were launched by several governments, they provided a strong force for expanding training and research in nuclear science and engineering.


YASIR CM
CS09B035

Vision of Science & War in 1930's

At the time, in the 1930s, the relationship between science and war was quite different from what it is today. Since then Science and Technology has made substantial impact in the field of wars. In the period around 1930’s, major advancement in technology of warfare has been seen.

At the time of World War II, it was Vannevar Bush who first proposed the idea of linking science to war by developing new weapons. He demonstrated that technology was the key to win a war and hence on his proposal, formed a new organization was formed named National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), by the then President Roosevelt bringing together government, military, business, and scientific leaders to coordinate military research. This committee led research in developing new weapons where bush supervised the Manhattan project and developed the first atomic bomb and thus securing victory of the allies. Bush's work not only helped the Allies win the war, but it changed the way scientific research was done in the U.S.

Followed by Bush, here comes Nobert Wiener who coined the term cybernetics, a new science of control mechanisms in which the exchange of information would play a central role. He focused on the problem of destroying enemy airplanes. He designed the “antiaircraft (AA) predictor” which would characterize an enemy pilot’s zigzagging flight, anticipate his future position with the help of Radar, and launch an antiaircraft shell to destroy his plane. The model then emerged as new part of science, the science of control systems, CYBERNETICS.

During 1930, publishing of newspapers was banned. The three closely related sciences which engaged in calculating the enemy were: Operational research, game theory, and cybernetics. Weiner divided the enemies into two categories, and regarded them as devils. One was the "Manichean devil" "who is determined on victory and will use any trick of craftiness or dissimulation to obtain this victory." The other, the "Augustinian devil" was characterized by the "evil" of chance and disorder but could not change the rules unlike the “Manichean devil”.


In the First World War science had certainly played a huge part in chemical synthesis for explosives, poison gas, aeronautics and much more. In World War Two the scientific community was thoroughly mobilized to serve the state for military ends, and this led to the continuing close connection between science and the state in the following decades. As time passes with the advancement of technology new graduates were allocated to all the important areas of defense research. By twentieth century science has become the language of war. Mutual interest in winning the war, reinforced by financial support, permanently linked the military and science in a web of cross-fertilization that continues today.


References:

1)Wikipedia technology used in defense system

2)Cybernetic warfare : Computers and cold warfare by C Warfare



By,

A.PRAVEEN KUMAR,

CH09B0003.

Babbage located Intelligence in the Mind not the attentive crafting body

Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer”, Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.

Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Soon after the attempt at making the difference engine crumbled, Babbage started designing a different, more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. The engine is not a single physical machine but a succession of designs that he tinkered with until his death in 1871. The main difference between the two engines is that the Analytical Engine could be programmed using punched cards. He realized that programs could be put on these cards so the person had only to create the program initially, and then put the cards in the machine and let it run. The analytical engine would have used loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could formulate results based on the results of preceding computations.

Referring to Zimmerman's article we understand that Babbage had a mechanistic idea of the whole universe, according to him everything is governed by some set of “laws assigned by the Almighty for the government of matter and of mind"

Babbage’s definition of intelligence is the combination of memory and foresight. According to Babbage the owner of an article is the person who designs rather than a person who crafts it. It can be seen when Babbage laid claims to owning the means of production, while his engineer thought he could make more calculating engines if they went into production. In Babbage own words on the 'Calculating engine':

'My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind'

We can clearly understand his idea of separation of mind and body from his text 'On the Economy of Machine and Manufacture'. Babbage described what is now called the Babbage principle, which describes certain advantages with division of labour. If the labour process can be divided among several workers, it is possible to assign only high-skill tasks to high-skill (mind) and leave other working tasks to less-skilled (body), thereby cutting labour costs. According the Babbage the machines in a factory will help to keep a check on the workers and increase their productivity. In Babbage' words:

"One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents"

Therefore, we can say that "Babbage located Intelligence in the Mind not the attentive crafting body."

References:

Schaffer, Simon - "Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System." 

Zimmerman, Andrew - “The Ideology of the Machine and the Spirit of the Factory: Remarx on Babbage and Ure.”

Wikipedia.org 

Sai Prashanth

CH09B015

Babbage located Intelligence in the Mind not the attentive crafting body. Discuss with reference to articles by Schaffer and Zimmerman.

Charles Babbage is an English mathematician, pseudo philosopher (analytic philosopher), inventor (mind) of the First mechanical computer which eventually led into complex designs.

Babbage gave importance to the result rather than the process by which it is done. The end result was identical if it was a machine or a human who does the work. He equalized the machine and the power needed to the skilled labor. This made the skilled labor to be seen as an equivalent to the machine handled by an unskilled labor (to be given less wage)
Babbage supports division of labor; he thinks that process of division of labor decreases the cost and increases the productivity. By this he gives priority to the machine (mind who invented the machine) rather than the crafting body.
For Babbage the intelligence is limited to the mind of the inventor.
Babbage says about his work,Difference Engine as -
'My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind'

The design of Analytical Engine is a very complex one, it requires a large amount of skill as Schaffer in his article quotes-
'in all those parts of the Machine where the nicest precision is required, the wheelwork only brings them by a first approximation (though a very nice one), to
their destined places: they are then settled into accurate adjustment by peculiar contrivances, which admit of no shake or latitude of any kind'

This problem of the geography of intelligence depended on the fetishisation of machines and the reification of the labour power exerted around them.

"It should be borne in mind that the inventor of a machine and the maker of it have two distinct ends to obtain. The object of the first is to make the machine as
complete as possible. The object of the second-and we have no right to expect he will be influenced by any other feeling-is to gain as much as possible by making
the machine,and it is in his interest to make it as complicated as possible."

Thus ,certainly when speaking of two different persons, the location of Intelligence is confined to mind but not to the crafting body.


By,
A.PRAVEEN KUMAR,
CH09B003.

Babbage located intelligence in the Mind, not the attentive crafting Body

Charles Babbage was born in London, England December 26, 1791. Babbage suffered from many childhood illnesses, which forced his family to send him to a clergy operated school for special care.

As an undergraduate, Babbage setup a society to critique the works of the French mathematician, Lacroix, on the subject of differential and integral calculus. Finding Lacroix's work a masterpiece and showing the good sense to admit so, Babbage was asked to setup a Analytical Society that was composed of Cambridge undergraduates.

He began to design a "difference engine" in 1821 which was a very large and complicated machine intended for doing logarithmic calculations automatically.

The device was based on the principle that the difference between certain values of the expression at a certain stage becomes constant. But it was difficult to make the machine parts accurate enough to prevent errors to occur, using the technology available at that time.

Encouraged by the work of "difference engine", he began design of another machine "the analytical machine", which could carry out many different types of calculations. Analytical engine used the concepts of Automatic Loom and Difference Engine.

The Analytical machine had five units- input, output, store, mill, and control. Store was used for storing numbers and Mill was used to do the calculations by rotation of gears and wheels. Control unit did the job of supervision of all other units. Note that these five units are similar to the functional units of a modern digital computer.No wonder he was called the "Father of Computers"!

Written Works:

• A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives (1826)
• 
  
• Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108, 000 (1827)
• 
  
• Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830)
• 
  
• On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832)
• 
  
• Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837)
• 
  
• Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) .           

"The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery. ... As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science."

---Excerpt from the Life of a Philosopher

references:

www.answers.com

www.hubpages.com

www.wiki.org

Akash Mondal

MM09B001

Human or Computer?

“Can machines think?”

This is the question posed by Alan Turing in his article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” which appeared in the British journal Mind in 1950. His question is one that lies at the heart of the ongoing dialectical engagement between our understandings of life and machinery.

 In the article, he proposes a test to find the answer to this question. The essence of the test is that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being. Having discussed the test, he remarks-

The original question “Can machines think?” I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless, I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

He went on to predict that by 2000, computers would be able to fool the average interrogator over five minutes of questioning at least 30 percent of the time. After sixty years of tremendous progress in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Turing’s words seem to have been almost prophetic. But although the Turing test, as it is now called, spawned a vibrant field of research known as artificial intelligence, his prediction has proved false. Today's computers are capable of feats Turing never imagined, yet in many simple tasks, a typical 5-year-old can outperform the most powerful computers.

Indeed, the abilities that require much of what is usually described as intelligence, like medical diagnosis or playing chess, have proved far easier for computers than seemingly simpler abilities: those requiring vision, hearing, language or motor control. It is this limitation to the abilities of artificial intelligence that allows us to devise ways of telling it apart from human intelligence.

Today we are all familiar with a reversed form of the Turing Test, namely, the CAPTCHA, or "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".

CAPTCHA

 Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. But internet bots may also be used for more malicious purposes, and it is this problem that scientists at Yahoo had to face at the start of the millennium.

 Rogue computer programs masquerading as teenagers were infiltrating Yahoo chat rooms, collecting personal information or posting links to Web sites promoting company products. Spam companies were creating havoc by writing programs that swiftly registered for hundreds of free Yahoo e-mail accounts then used them for bulk mailings.

 What they needed was a simple way of telling a human user from a computer program. In their quest for a solution, Yahoo called a conference with a group of computer science researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Manuel Blum, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon who took part in the Yahoo conference, realized that the failures of artificial intelligence might provide exactly the solution Yahoo needed. Why not devise a new sort of Turing test, he suggested, that would be simple for humans but would baffle sophisticated computer programs.

Yahoo liked the idea, so with his Ph.D. student Luis von Ahn and others Dr. Blum devised a collection of cognitive puzzles based on the challenging problems of artificial intelligence. The puzzles have the property that computers can generate and grade the tests even though they cannot pass them. The researchers decided to call their puzzles CAPTCHAS, an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart

A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. CAPTCHA tests are based on open problems in artificial intelligence (AI): decoding images of distorted text, for instance, is well beyond the capabilities of modern computers.

Some researchers promote image recognition CAPTCHAs as a possible alternative for text-based CAPTCHAs. Computer-based recognition algorithms require the extraction of colour, texture, shape, or special point features, which cannot be correctly extracted after the designed distortions. However, human can still recognize the original concept depicted in the images even with these distortions.

A recent example of image recognition CAPTCHA is to present the website visitor with a grid of random pictures and instruct the visitor to click on specific pictures to verify that they are not a bot. (such as “Click on the pictures of the airplane, the boat and the clock”)

Another CAPTCHA, called Sounds, consists of a distorted, computer-generated sound clip containing a word or sequence of numbers. To solve the puzzle, a user must listen to the clip and type the word or numbers into the box provided.

The different types of CAPTCHAS in use today illustrate some of the limits of mainstream artificial intelligence today. But already researchers, including von Ahn, one of the creators of the CAPTCHA, have started experimenting with an idea that will help AI overcome these deficiencies.

 In 2007, Von Ahn launched a set of games designed to get humans to ‘teach’ computers. This is "human computation," the art of using massive groups of networked human minds to solve problems that computers cannot. Ask a machine to point to a picture of a bird or pick out a particular voice in a crowd, and it usually fails. But even the most dim-witted human can do this easily. Von Ahn has realized that our normal view of the human-computer relationship can be inverted. Most of us assume computers make people smarter. He sees people as a way to make computers smarter. 

GOVIND MENON

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              CAPTCHAs have several applications for practical security, such as:

·         Preventing Comment Spam in Blogs. Most bloggers are familiar with programs that submit bogus comments, usually for the purpose of raising search engine ranks of some website. By using a CAPTCHA, only humans can enter comments on a blog.

·         Protecting Website Registration. Several companies (Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc.) offer free email services. Up until a few years ago, most of these services suffered from a specific type of attack: "bots" that would sign up for thousands of email accounts every minute. The solution to this problem was to use CAPTCHAs to ensure that only humans obtain free accounts.

·         Online Polls. In November 1999, http://www.slashdot.org released an online poll asking which the best graduate school in computer science was (a dangerous question to ask over the web!). As is the case with most online polls, IP addresses of voters were recorded in order to prevent single users from voting more than once. However, students at Carnegie Mellon found a way to stuff the ballots using programs that voted for CMU thousands of times. CMU's score started growing rapidly. The next day, students at MIT wrote their own program and the poll became a contest between voting "bots." MIT finished with 21,156 votes, Carnegie Mellon with 21,032 and every other school with less than 1,000. Can the result of any online poll be trusted? Not unless the poll ensures that only humans can vote.

·         Preventing Dictionary Attacks. CAPTCHAs can also be used to prevent dictionary attacks in password systems. The idea is simple: prevent a computer from being able to iterate through the entire space of passwords by requiring it to solve a CAPTCHA after a certain number of unsuccessful logins. This is better than the classic approach of locking an account after a sequence of unsuccessful logins, since doing so allows an attacker to lock accounts at will.

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References:

1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid – Douglas Hofstadter

2. http://www.nytimes.com/

3. http://www.wired.com/

4. http://www.captcha.net/

5. http://www.wikipedia.org/