The Hyperpower of Informatics

Berry Gérard

Description

Only recently have we begun to appreciate the radical degree to which informatics—the science of computers and algorithms—is transforming modern society. In this lively and accessible survey of its foundations and implications, Gérard Berry shows how information and data have come to occupy a central role not only in our technologies and sciences, but also in our daily lives. This growing dominance of smart devices, algorithms, and networked data, he argues, has helped usher in a new technological paradigm that cannot be fully grasped with the materialist mathematical and scientific models of the twentieth century alone. Consequently, we are living in an era of unevenly distributed understanding and mastery—and thus power. To correct this imbalance and puncture some widespread misapprehensions about information technology, The Hyperpower of Informatics examines and explains the informatics underpinnings of everyday operations like email, digital photography, and peer-to-peer file sharing; emergent technological trends including cryptocurrencies and autonomous vehicles; and specialized areas such as medical imaging and mathematical research. Also attentive to the proliferation of programming bugs and security holes and the critical systems that may hang in the balance, Berry takes a holistic perspective of informatics and its growing prominence in a continually shifting landscape. Filled with in-depth illustrations related with wit and verve, The Hyperpower of Informatics is an essential companion for investigating and demystifying the role of informatics in all aspects of the contemporary world. Gérard Berry is a professor emeritus at the Collège de France, where he directed the chair of Algorithms, Machines, and Languages until 2019, and previously the chairs of Informatics and Digital Sciences and Technical Innovation. He is a member of the Académie des Sciences, the Académie des Technologies, and the Academia Europaea. He is a recipient of the gold medal from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). 

Sujets

• Informatique
• Computers

Informations

• Publié par: Odile Jacob
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782738156525
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Originally published in French as L’hyperpuissance de l’informatique by Gérard Berry. © Editions Odile Jacob, 2017.
The present English-language edition is published by Editions Odile Jacob.
© Odile Jacob, May 2021.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission of the publisher. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
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ISBN : 978-2-7381-5652-5
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo .
Foreword

This book is based largely on lectures I have given at the Collège de France, 1 first in 2007–2008 as the annual Liliane Bettencourt Chair of Technological Innovation (Berry G., 2008; Berry G., L’informatique du temps et des événements, 2013) 2 ; then in 2009–2010 as the annual Chair of Informatics and Digital Sciences, endowed in partnership with Inria (Berry G., 2013); 3 and finally as a full professor of “Algorithms, Machines and Languages,” the chair I held from 2012 to 2019 (Berry G., 2013). 4 It also draws from the numerous seminars I invited colleagues to give to complement my lectures. I also learned about many of the subjects I discuss here from other professors’ courses at the Collège de France. In particular, successive holders of the annual Chair in Informatics and Digital Sciences have taught me a great deal, as have professors Françoise Combes in astronomy and José Sahel in human vision. Finally, I have benefited from many other links with great scientists working in France and elsewhere. I’ve also lectured on this material in a wide variety of settings, from major public, scientific, and industrial bodies to local hobby clubs and high school classes.
It’s an extraordinary opportunity to work in an open institution such as the Collège de France, an opportunity that can now be shared by video if not in person: all the courses and seminars I mention may be found and downloaded on the Collège de France website, along with their supporting materials. Most are in French, but some are dubbed into English. I refer often to these by providing links, which are clickable in the electronic version of this book.
I will add that many of the ideas developed here, and my ways of talking about them, were born in large part during lessons I gave at the Les Pouces verts (“green thumbs”) Montessori school in Mouans-Sartoux, on the French Riviera, first to nine- to twelve-year-olds and then to six- to nine-year-olds. Explaining the world to children of this age is a difficult exercise. Curious, open, and demanding, these children and their educators have greatly changed the ways I understand, act, and communicate – I hope for the better.
Of course, I have also benefited from constant dialogue with my colleagues, computer scientists and others, whom I would like to thank very much. Without being able to mention them all, I will thank Serge Abiteboul, Martin Abadi, Nicholas Ayache, François Baccelli, Francis Besse, Jean-Daniel Boissonnat, François Bourdoncle, Françoise Combes, Gilles Dowek, Patrick Flandrin, Cédric Fournet, Georges Gonthier, Nicolas Halbwachs, Gérard Huet, Michael Kishinevsky, Edward Lee, Xavier Leroy, Jean-Jacques Lévy, Jean-Christophe Madre, Philippe Manoury, Laurent Massoulié, Maurice Nivat, Marc Pouzet, Manuel Serrano, Laurent Thénié, and Jean Vuillemin. I would also like to offer a special thank you to Frédéric Guichard, who introduced me to algorithmic photography, and to Clément Narteau, who did the same for dune physics. Finally, I’d like to extend my special thanks to my friends at the Société Informatique de France, Inria, and “La Main à la pâte,” who are working hard to address issues in computer dissemination and education.
This book was translated from its original French by Michael Fourman, Professor of Computer Systems at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), and myself. In 2010, at Michael’s invitation, I had the pleasure of repeating in English eight lectures from my second annual chair at the Collège de France – the Informatics and Digital Sciences Chair, sponsored by Inria, of which I had the honor of being the first holder. I am immensely grateful to Michael for his invitation and for this work.
Last but not least, I warmly thank Odile Jacob for her constant support, and Daniel Levin Becker for his beautiful final touch on the translation.
CAVEAT . I warn the reader that the book was originally written for a French audience, and that it may contain some discussions and references to France that are somewhat specific to France and thus not of universal interest. But I suppose informatics is no different here from the rest of the world – except that, as with many other European countries, France has been quite slow, compared to American or Asian countries, to understand its importance.
NOTE . In this book I try to cover some topics on which I have some knowledge but am not an expert. It’s therefore possible that some mistakes, misinterpretations, or obvious gaps remain. If you find any, please report them to me at [e-mail].
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: a new way of thinking

“Thinking is meaningless unless you reflect first.”
(Rien ne sert de penser, il faut réfléchir avant.)
Pierre Dac, master of the absurd

In my inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in January 2008, “Why and How the World Is Going Digital,” I predicted that informatics would soon be everywhere, that its expansion into all sectors of society and science was only just beginning. This was precisely the time when society was beginning to perceive its impacts, especially through observation of the dizzying expansions of the internet and mobile phones. Many already saw that both interpersonal communications and the structure of labor would be profoundly changed, but few were yet interested in other, less visible aspects, such as the inevitable massive computerization of objects – whose great long-term importance I have stressed – or the problems that would arise from computer security and the collection of personal data. Many talked about it without quite knowing whether to take it seriously. I also mentioned a situation that astonished me, one that remains largely unchanged today: most of the political, industrial, medical, administrative, and legal players I met seemed constantly surprised by developments that were entirely anticipated, planned, and announced by people working in informatics research and the IT industry. Isn’t it surprising to be constantly surprised by explicitly planned predictability? Fortunately, in any case, curiosity was beginning to appear.
Ten years later, I continue to see the power of the constantly growing computerization of the world. Alas, however, I also note the persistence of permanent surprise, now combined with various fears: some rational, others less so. This is due, I think, to a lack of understanding of the very nature of informatics on the part of the general public, and of decision-makers in particular. Such understanding is required to fully appreciate the causes and dynamics of its intrusion into everyday life and into many previously unaffected activities and professions. Admittedly, things have improved, at least on the surface: politicians are taking an interest and are finally trying to respond, the media discuss it much more than before, and computer science and technology are increasingly included in general education programs. But while many articles and books are devoted to the impacts and dangers of “becoming digital” – I will analyze this later – most are content to analyze the effects without really taking up their causes, i.e.  computer science as an activity in its own right. To understand the “digital world” emerging at great speed, it’s essential to understand and analyze these causes. What is informatics? What are its objects of study, its ways of thinking, and its ways of doing? Whence comes its amazing power, and how does it spread so quickly, so deeply, throughout the world? How does it interact with other human activities and with traditional physical or mechanical systems?
Answering these questions is my goal in this book. I will try to do so not in a theoretical way, but by analyzing examples from various fields, entering into somewhat technical details only on rare occasions. I’ll consider my goal to have been achieved only if the reader manages to build a new mental model , one that is better adapted to the future, rather than trying to fit computer science into mental patterns inherited from previous centuries – including the twentieth. To simplify the discussion, I will consider the general impact of informatics to have started around the year 2000, even though the underpinning science and technologies were developed much earlier.

Computational thinking
My recurrent theme will be that the upheavals caused by informatics cannot be understood within traditional mental patterns derived from classical science and techniques closely tied to the physical world. Indeed, informatics differs profoundly from all previous scientific and technological activities in its objects of study and methods of action: it calculates with information using algorithms , programs , and machines , essentially computers of all kinds. Information is encoded as digitized data , the algorithm is the conceptual mechanism for systematic calculation, the program is a precise expression of the algorithm in an appropriate language, and the machine is a material object capable of making the calculations necessary to transform a program into actions. An absolutely essential point is that the physical nature of the technological objects used to store the data and perform the calculations is irrelevan