Computer and processes

One goal of these writings is to better understand the nature of computers. Maybe the common sense view on computers consists in a picture of some ugly box, which is making noise, connected with another box that contains mainly static, colorfull images and whose content can be slightly modified by pushing letters or moving around another small, round-shaped box. The common view furthermore is that these boxes are in general difficult to control and lack the most simplest cognitive mechanisms, i.e. fishes in an aquarium are more vital (whatever that means...)

But what exactly is the computer ? One option would be to use Descartes body-soul dualism. I mean to split the computer into two worlds, as we often do when we talk about ourselves, our bodies and souls. So, it's commonly suggested to divide the concept of computer into worlds of hardware and software, with only minor interacting forces in between. But the word software is funny somehow as well: Something soft, which we cannot touch with our hands. I prefer the French word "logiciel" which means "algorithms", processes that solve a problem.

By the way, it seems that the early use of the word algorithm was used always in relation to solving a well specified problem X. As problem get more complex and more difficult to grasp with our sequential human memories, we not often use algorithms to deal with a difficult problem, but rules of thumbs (heuristics), i.e. processes that mostly solves a problem.

In any case, the important thing of our concept of computer is maybe less the physical necessities of hardware, but the effects of many running processes that each can interact and be transformed into the vocabulary of other processes. The similarity between processes and language is very interesting. But also language can be seen as a process, a process that controls our short term memories. Funny, isn't "it" ? :-)