** This event is open to the public. Public registrations will close on Monday, November 25th at 11:00 AM **
The word algorithm only became a technical term in the 1960s, making it a distinctly modern idea. But procedures that we can now recognize as algorithmic have existed for millennia, from Euclid’s method for computing the greatest common denominator to Ada Lovelace’s famed equation-solving program. In this workshop, we will attempt to implement a selection of algorithm-like procedures from past ages in Python. Doing so will raise conceptual questions, since the most obvious ways of doing things with modern computers are not necessarily equivalent to the methods by which people would have computed in the past. By grappling with these challenges, we will arrive at a better understanding of the social conditions that are needed to make computational procedures legible.
This presentation will be led by Jeffrey M. Binder, postdoctoral fellow at Penn State University’s Center for Humanities and Information, specializing in the very early history of computation (pre-1900), Enlightenment studies, Romantic literature, and digital humanities. Jeff is the creator of the Homespring esoteric programming language and received his PhD from The Graduate Center, CUNY.
