Addressing the Question “What is a Program Text?” via Turing Scholarship
Edgar Graham Daylight · IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2021
For decades, a range of disciplines (from engineering and computer science to philosophy, law, and history) have seen debates over the nature of computer programs. Various scholars—including Paul Ceruzzi, Timothy Colburn, Gerardo Con Diaz, Liesbeth De Mol, Nathan Ensmenger, Thomas Haigh, and Matti Tedre—have advanced a wide array of views on the matter, debating whether the programs are machines, texts, algorithms, hybrids, or even technologies in the first place. In this Think Piece, I use notions of “law” developed by Arthur Eddington and other contemporaries of Alan Turing to explore what a program text (as opposed to a computer program) is.