Computers today. Гурьянова В.И. - 6 стр.

      Classical computer science has linked human computing and machine
computing in the so-called Church-Turing thesis: Everything that a human being
can compute can be computed by a machine. According to this thesis, our intui-
tive understanding of computation refers to the set of computations that can be
formally prescribed. Closely related to this idea is the concept of an algorithm.
      An algorithm is a set of rules or instructions for getting a desired output from
a given input. The word “algorithm” originated in the Middle East. Curiously
enough it comes from the Latin version of the last name of the Persian scholar Abu
Jafar Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowaresmi (Algorithmi) whose textbook on
arithmetic (825 A.D.) employed for the first time Hindu positional decimal notation
and gave birth to algebra as an independent branch of mathematics. It was trans-
lated into Latin in the 12th century and had a great influence for many centuries on
the development of computing procedures. The name of the textbook’s author be-
came associated with computations in general and used as a term “algorithm”.
      Personal computing is a partnership between the person and the computer.
Believe it or not, a personal computer is easier to operate than a car. It’s even
easier to operate than a telephone, which comes with no instructions at all. Sud-
denly, personal computers invaded our world. It’s not surprising that it takes
most of us a while to get comfortable with a comparatively new technology that
so quickly arrived on the scene.

                                          Text 2
      1. Read the text “Using computers”. Do you think the style of the text is:
       Serious and analytical?
       Enthusiastic and persuasive?
       Ironical and amusing?
       Positive and optimistic?
       Negative and critical?


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