The Man from the Future

1. Made in Budapest

-

Von Neumann rigorously defines a class as a collection of sets that share a property. In his theory it is no longer possible to speak meaningfully of either a "set of all sets" or a "class of all classes"; only a "class of all sets". His formulation elegantly avoids the contradictions of Russell's paradox without all the restrictions of type theory. There is no "set of all sets that are not members of themselves" but there is a "class of all sets that are not members of themselves." Crucially, this class is not a member of itself because it is not a set (it's a class!).

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1932)
"We are obliged always to divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.
Quantum entanglement - spooky action at a distance.
Everett: All the particles in the universe are entwined in a single massive superposition of all possible states, the "universal wave function". Every time a measurement is made, the universe "splits" to create a crop of alternative realities, in which each of the possibilities play out (so Schrodinger's cat is alive in one universe and dead in another. Or in several.)
Most physicists now believe that there is no instantaneous wave function collapse. instead, the wave function "decays" in a small but finite amount of time into a classical state through a process called "decoherence". Another point of view, "spontaneous collapse" posits that wave function collapse occurs on a time scale that is inversely related to the size of the object in question. The wave function of an electron may not collapse for 100m years, but a cat's would collapse almost instantly.

-

First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC (1945) would become the most influential document in the history of computing, listing five distinct parts or organs of the von Neumann architecture:
- A central arithmetic unit
- A central control unit
- A memory
- Input (sensory neuron ) units
- Output (motor neuron) units
In 1930, Gödel had written a computer program long before any machine capable of running it would exist. He had dissolved in one fell swoop the rigid distinction between syntax and data.
Words coding the orders are handled in the memory just like numbers. That is the essence of modern-day coding