Onlife

Every year, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen) elects a Gauss Professor (Gauß-Professur der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen) to honour the memory of the great scientist . Normally, the Professorship is awarded to an "importat scientist in one of Gauss' fields of interest". So, no philosopher has been elected so far. They just made an exception. Next year, I will be their Gauss Professor, in recognition of my work on the philosophy of information. An overwhelming honour, but very exciting. No teaching, complete freedom of research and great support. Shame on me if I do not make the most of such a privilege. I better start revising my German.

Why not?

I recently tried to invite Weizenbaum to contribute to a book comprising interviews with some of the key researchers in the area of Philosophy of Computing and Information . Sadly, it was not going to happen. Sometimes invitations arrive too late. Weizenbaum will be remembered for several achievements, including being the father of ELIZA and the author of the very influential Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation.

The International European Conference on Computing and Philosophy (E-CAP) 2008 will start tomorrow (Monday 16th) and last until Wednesday 18th, see http://www.lirmm.fr/ECAP08/ If you cannot attend in person, this Wiki-debate allows participants to read and comment on the abstract of all papers that will be presented at the conference. Wiki-debate is found at http://www.wiki-debate.org/ and a tutorial is available on-line. To be able to post annotations and comments, you will need to log in. Your username and password are both case sensitive and are as follows: user: IACAP Password: IACAP IACAP's recommendation is to use Firefox as a web browser. http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/

Wiki only in Portughese , sorry, but here is the full story about inforgs from TidBITS , and here a blog on what "infosphere" may mean.

As suspected, references to the contacts between Wiener and Turing, especially through Von Neumann (who seemed to miss no opportunity to advertise Turing's brilliant work) can be found fairly easily (see for example The Essential Turing ). "In the spring of 1947, Wiener went to England, where he visited the British computer-building projects, and spoke with Alan Turing." ( note ) interesting... (see previous blog)

Better blog it before I forget. Enjoy it.