On Computing: The Fourth Great Scientific Domain

About this book

Computing is not simply about hardware or software or calculation or applications. Computing writes Paul Rosenbloom is an exciting and diverse yet remarkably coherent scientific enterprise that is highly multidisciplinary yet maintains a unique core of its own. In On Computing Rosenbloom proposes that computing is a great scientific domain on a par with the physical life and social sciences. Rosenbloom introduces a relational approach for understanding computing conceptualizing it in terms of forms of interaction and implementation to reveal the hidden structures and connections among its disciplines. He argues for the continuing vitality of computing surveying the leading edge in computings combination with other domains from biocomputing and brain-computer interfaces to crowdsourcing and virtual humans to robots and the intermingling of the real and the virtual. He explores forms of higher order coherence or macrostructures over complex computing topics and organizations. Finally he examines the very notion of a great scientific domain in philosophical terms honing his argument that computing should be considered the fourth great scientific domain. With On Computing Rosenbloom a key architect of the founding of University of Southern Californias Institute for Creative Technologies and former Deputy Director of USCs Information Sciences Institute offers a broader perspective on what computing is and what it can become.