stored-program-concept

The chapter recounts the author's experience working at the Los Alamos computation center during the Manhattan Project, where early IBM bookkeeping machines were used to solve complex differential equations essential for atomic bomb design. It highlights the limitations of these mechanical and semi-manual computing processes and presents John von Neumann's visionary proposals for fully electronic computers, binary number systems, internal memory, stored programs, and universal computing machines that would revolutionize computational efficiency and autonomy.

The chapter discusses the foundational ideas behind modern computing, highlighting Alan Turing's concept of a universal machine and John von Neumann's proposal to store instructions in a computer's memory, which led to the development of programmable computers. It also recounts the author's personal experiences with early computers like the JONIAC and IBM 700 series, illustrating the rapid technological progress from the 1940s to the 1950s and the increasing accessibility and power of computing machines.

Chapter 17 explores the evolution of computers from unreliable vacuum tube machines to sophisticated digital systems, highlighting their growing role as a controlling 'God' in modern society. The chapter discusses the concept of a self-sustaining, solid-state computer life form that could eventually supersede biological life, reflecting human projections of control and power. It critiques the industrial and technological systems that worship production and destruction, warning of an entropic future leading to ecological and systemic collapse.

The chapter traces the evolution of computing machinery from early mechanical devices like Babbage's Analytical Engine, emphasizing the critical innovation of conditional branching, through wartime developments in Britain and the US such as the Colossi and ENIAC. It highlights the parallel yet independent emergence of the stored-program concept, with von Neumann's EDVAC proposal and Alan Turing's theoretical universal machine converging on the idea of unified memory for instructions and data, thereby laying the foundation for modern programmable digital computers.

This chapter details Alan Turing's pioneering vision of stored-program computing, emphasizing the universality of the Turing machine and the innovative concept of program modification during computation. It explores Turing's abstract view of computation as symbolic manipulation independent of meaning, his practical engineering plans for the ACE computer including modular instruction sets and delay-line memory, and his foresight into the emergence of programming as a profession, remote computing, and diverse computational applications beyond arithmetic.