How computers affected the humanities

Humanities , Computers and Cultural Heritage Royal Netherlands

How the humanities inform medicine.

Roberto Busa (1913-2011), Pioneer of Computers for the Humanities

In the springtime of 2008, at the outset of a conference, I had the pleasure to drive him in my small car to the airport whence he had to depart. (Aged 95, he still travelled unperturbed on his own!) After so many years of formally respectful friendship, I suddenly felt the need to loyally disclose to him my personal distance from religions, included the one he so vividly professed. He listened...

How Can Quantum Computers Fail?

We propose and discuss two postulates on the nature of errors in highly correlated noisy physical stochastic systems. The first postulate asserts that errors for a pair of substantially correlated elements are themselves substantially correlated. The second postulate asserts that in a noisy system with many highly correlated elements there will be a strong effect of error synchronization. These...

How Quantum Computers Can Fail

We propose and discuss two postulates on the nature of errors in highly correlated noisy physical stochastic systems. The first postulate asserts that errors for a pair of substantially correlated elements are themselves substantially correlated. The second postulate asserts that in a noisy system with many highly correlated elements there will be a strong effect of error synchronization. These...