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Ada Lovelace and Her Legacy
nightcats writes: Nature has an extensive piece on the legacy of the "enchantress of abstraction," the extraordinary Victorian-era computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Her monograph on the Babbage machine was described by Babbage himself as a creation of "that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force that few masculine intellects (in our own country at least) could have exerted over it." Ada's remarkable merging of intellect and intuition — her capacity to analyze and capture the conceptual and functional foundations of the Babbage machine — is summarized with a historical context which reveals the precocious modernity of her scientific mind. "By 1841 Lovelace was developing a concept of 'Poetical Science', in which scientific logic would be driven by imagination, 'the Discovering faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of science.' She saw mathematics metaphysically, as 'the language of the unseen relations between things;' but added that to apply it, 'we must be able to fully appreciate, to feel, to seize, the unseen, the unconscious.' She also saw that Babbage's mathematics needed more imaginative presentation."
With stuff like this, we wonder why women complain or feel harassed?
Ada Lovelace had an unmatched intellect combined with imagination and creativity, and especially given the era she lived in, is worthy of great admiration. Show a little respect instead of being a d--k yourself.
Ada Lovelace had an unmatched intellect
as evidenced by what exactly? seriously, what basis do you have for making this rather strong claim?
Here are some counter-examples you might like to consider:
- Gauss invented the procedure that is now known as the Fast Fourier Transform before Lovelace was born.
- Galois proved that there is no algebraic procedure to solve polynomial equations beyond the quartic while Lovelace was still a tween
- Boole devised what is now known as Boolean logic and proved various properties that are probably being used by a programmer right now while Lovelace was working
In all sincerity, I'm not sure which is worse: joking about Lovelace's sexual life, or seriously claiming that she was of unmatched genius. If you ask me, they are both despicable.
I agree they aren't being respectful, but then again why should they?
Well, for one thing, when you express yourself like a crude fool, you shouldn't be surprised when people perceive as one. As for Ada Lovelace - why should you respect her? You mean, you don't already know? Or is it that you can see past the fact that she expressed herself in the style and terms that were regarded as appropriate for her time? Read a few books of contemporary authors, and you'll see. Well, perhaps not, but at least you'll then have had the opportunity.
Many of her views on the nature of science and perhaps especially maths, were spot on - it isn't enough to know the equations or how to write code; to really understand, you need imagination and intuition - here's a quote that's attributed to Einstein (you do respect him?):
âoeImagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.â
And "intuition" is just another word for "abstraction": the process of "summing up" the essence of a class of concepts into a single, new concept - which lies at the very heart of mathmatics. Take natural numbers: a number is the essential quality that is common to all sets that are equivalent under isomorphism (in the category of sets: bijections). When we understand an abstraction without having to go into technical details like this, we call it intuition. So, don't scoff at imagination and intuition.
With stuff like this, we wonder why women complain or feel harassed?
I feel genuinely put upon when I hear guys say things like this.
So, I'm going to say this in every thread where I encounter this statement.
I am a woman. I do not feel harassed. Stop fucking speaking for women and let us stand up for ourselves if it is necessary.
Please do not presume to speak for me, and further, please look up the definition of "harassed", because even if the above statement was insulting to all women (it isn't), it certainly does not count for the dictionary or legal definitions of "harassment".
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Who would have predicted that a Slashdot story that mentions a woman from the 19th century would inevitably whining comments about feminism and dicksucking jokes?
You guys are just the best.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think you basically said that unless you're a schoolyard alpha, you'll never make Fields Medal level contributions. You gotta be bloody kidding me. I think of Claude Shannon, who apparently hid away in his office at AT&T Bell Labs, and I can only imagine he would be chewed to bits in the petty verbal battles you so admire. Or of Alan Turing, who no doubt was relentlessly hounded by the ancestors of your beloved verbal alphas for being gay. He ended up committing suicide, apparently. Most of the repartee you regard as a necessary precondition for your respect is aimed at censoring deviations from the status quo. Shouldn't we support the opposite? There is no necessary connection between spoken wit and technical achievement.
First post: Intentionally confusing her with porn actress.
Second post: Her dad was cool - here's some cool stuff about him!
Third post: Meh. She didn't really do anything noteworthy.
etc.
Fuck you guys. Stop living up to the worst stereotypes of geeks and nerds.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.