Most people, if they think about the topic at all, probably imagine computer science involves the programming of computers.\u00a0 But what are computers?\u00a0 In most cases, these are just machines of one form or another.\u00a0 And what is programming?\u00a0 Well, it is the issuing of instructions (“commands” in the programming jargon) for the machine to do something or other, or to achieve some state or other.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, I view Computer Science as nothing more or less than the science of delegation.
\nWhen delegating a task to another person, we are likely to be more effective (as\u00a0the delegator or commander) the more we know about the skills and capabilities and curent commitments and attitudes of that person (the delegatee or commandee).\u00a0\u00a0 So too with delegating to machines.\u00a0\u00a0 Accordingly, a large part of theoretical computer science is concerned with exploring the properties of machines, or rather, the deductive properties of mathematical models of machines.\u00a0 Other parts of the discipline concern the properties of languages for commanding machines, including their meaning (their semantics) – this is programming language theory.\u00a0 Because the vast majority of lines of program code nowadays are written by teams of programmers, not individuals, then much of computer science –\u00a0part of\u00a0the branch known as software engineering – is concerned with how to best organize and manage and evaluate the work of teams of people.\u00a0\u00a0 Because most machines are controlled by humans and act in concert for or with or to humans, then another, related branch of this science of delegation deals with the study of human-machine interactions.\u00a0\u00a0 In both these branches, computer science reveals itself to have a side which connects directly with the human and social sciences, something not true of the other sciences often grouped with Computer Science: pure mathematics, physics, or chemistry.\u00a0
\nAnd from its modern beginnings 70 years ago, computer science has been concerned with trying to automate whatever can be automated – in other words, with delegating the task of delegating.\u00a0 This is the branch known as Artificial Intelligence.\u00a0\u00a0 We have intelligent machines which can command other machines, and\u00a0manage and control them in the same way that humans could.\u00a0\u00a0 But not all bilateral relationships between machines\u00a0are those of commander-and-subordinate.\u00a0 More often, in distributed networks machines are peers of one another, intelligent and autonomous (to varying degrees).\u00a0 Thus, commanding is useless – persuasion is what is needed for one intelligent machine to ensure that another machine does what the first desires.\u00a0 And so, as one would expect in a science of delegation, computational argumentation arises as an important area of study.
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Most people, if they think about the topic at all, probably imagine computer science involves the programming of computers.\u00a0 But what are computers?\u00a0 In most cases, these are just machines of one form or another.\u00a0 And what is programming?\u00a0 Well, it is the issuing of instructions (“commands” in the programming jargon) for the machine to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,23,30,40,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-science","category-computing-as-interaction","category-decision-theory","category-getting-things-done-intelligence","category-joint-action-society","category-planning","p1","y2013","m04","d20","h14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}