A 1956 encyclopaedia's view on the computer
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 8th Jun 2012 23:07 UTC
Hardware, Embedded Systems Two weeks ago, my grandmother passed away - the last grandparent I had left. As those of you with experience in dealing with deceased family members know, the funeral is only the start; the next part is taking care of the deceased's affairs, which includes going through all their belongings to determine what to do with them. I took care of my grandmother's extensive book collection, and while doing so, I hit something that fascinated me to no end: a six-volume Christian Encyclopaedia from 1956. In it, I found something I just had to share with OSNews.
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3rdalbum
Member since:
2008-05-26

You should view it as an interesting book that shows a lot of how people throughout the ages thought about things. You should not treat it as an encyclopedia.


I assume when you say "you", you mean "people". I wanted to clarify yet again that I'm not a Christian, and therefore treat the Bible's contents as being an order of magnitude less reliable than Wikipedia :-)

I don't remember the passage about "I haven't come to abolish the laws of the Old Testament". A bible reference would be handy for me if you have one available.

And again sorry for starting a bit of a religious discussion on OSnews.

To bring things back toward their correct topic, this encyclopedia entry has come at just the right time. I've been re-reading Steven Levy's book "Hackers", the opening part of which is set only a few years after that encyclopedia entry. In the book Hackers there is discussion about chess-playing programs, so it's really quite telling that Chess was singled-out as a very computer-solvable problem, even as some people were claiming that computers would never be able to beat adults.

Reply Parent Score: 3

dionicio Member since:
2006-07-12

Everything, even code, must be periodically rewritten -reworded- in order to preserve its purpose.

Reply Parent Score: 1