Beauty, Loss and the Intangible: Charles Babbage's Unfinished Machines
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
19-9-2016 7:00 PM
Description
Charles Babbage is best known today as the nineteenth-century mathematician who conceived, designed and partially built what would have been the first Turing-complete computer. Although history has painted him as an overly ambitious genius, embittered over time by the failure of the government and the public to recognize the significance of his work, his writings reveal a much more complex character—part romantic, part visionary, part society lion and part tragic figure. Through an interweaving of historical texts and original poetry, Dr. Aitken will explore the ways in which Babbage’s complicated relationship with technology mirrors our own, and how the machine becomes a double to the human, a space where our fears and misgivings about how we see ourselves are reflected back to our view.
Recommended Citation
Aitken, Neil, "Beauty, Loss and the Intangible: Charles Babbage's Unfinished Machines" (2016). Humanities Symposium. 25.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2016/2016/25
Beauty, Loss and the Intangible: Charles Babbage's Unfinished Machines
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Charles Babbage is best known today as the nineteenth-century mathematician who conceived, designed and partially built what would have been the first Turing-complete computer. Although history has painted him as an overly ambitious genius, embittered over time by the failure of the government and the public to recognize the significance of his work, his writings reveal a much more complex character—part romantic, part visionary, part society lion and part tragic figure. Through an interweaving of historical texts and original poetry, Dr. Aitken will explore the ways in which Babbage’s complicated relationship with technology mirrors our own, and how the machine becomes a double to the human, a space where our fears and misgivings about how we see ourselves are reflected back to our view.
Comments
Featured Speaker
Convocation Credit: Creative and Performing Arts