De la métaphore dans la langue informatique

The French of information science is a variant of a lively general language submitted to constant changes. In order to bring closer, better understand and get acqainted with the technical terms either names of equipment, programmes, or situations peculiar to computer reality, the user refers to everyday life (e.g. passerelle, English gateway; souris, English mouse) or to universal or mythological concepts (e.g. argonautes - internautes) thanks to the phenomenon of metaphor. It sometimes happens that the original concept, which served as a basis for the creation of a metaphor, is obliterated memory and computer users apply a new term being unaware of its origin. Just in this way during metaphoric operations totally new words are formed and they influence the specific character of the language of information science

Implementing a One Address CPU in Logisim

Most computer users have an incorrect, but useful, cognitive metaphor for computers in which the user says (or types or clicks) something and a mystical, almost intelligent or magical, behavior happens. It is not a stretch to describe computer users as believing computers follow the laws of magic, where some magic incantation is entered, and the computer responds with an expected, but magical, behavior. This magic computer does not actually exist. In reality computer are machines, and every action a computer performs reduces to a set of mechanical operations. In fact the first complete definition of a working computer was a mechanical machine designed by Charles Babbage in 1834, and would have run on steam power. Probably the biggest success of Computer Science (CS) in the 20th century was the development of abstractions that hide the mechanical nature of computers. The fact that average people use computers without ever considering that they are mechanistic is a triumph of CS designers. This purpose of this monograph is to break the abstract understanding of a computer, and to explain a computer’s behavior in completely in mechanistic terms. It will deal specifically with the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the computer, as this is where the magic happens. All other parts of a computer can be seen as just providing information for the CPU to operate on. This monograph will deal with a specific type of CPU, a one-address CPU, and will explain this CPU using only standard gates, specifically AND, OR, NOT, NAND and XOR gates, and 4 basic Integrated Circuits (ICs), the Decoder, Multiplexer, Adder, and Flip Flop. All of these gates and components can be described as mechanical transformations of input data to output data, and the overall CPU can then be seen as a mechanical device.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/oer/1002/thumbnail.jp

Sources of Computer Metaphors for Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction

This chapter is devoted to finding sources for metaphors of computer visualization and human-computer interaction. Computer metaphor is considered the basic idea for the development of interfaces, visualization views, and scenarios of visualization and interaction. Global metaphors map the main design idea. These ideas depend on global events and changes in society, art, and science. In the “pre-computer” era, such ideas formed the basics of cartography, engineering drawings, and drawing function graphs on the Cartesian plane. When designing visualization and interactive systems, computer metaphors use “magic features” beside analogies with daily life. Nowadays ideas of visualization are often based on “gamification.” This approach presupposes creating tools that provide software engineers with an interface similar to that of computer games. In this chapter, ideas drawn upon fairy tales, science fiction books, fantasy films, and other similar spheres are considered as sources of computer metaphors. Such metaphors are very interesting when designing visualization systems based on virtual reality

The Complementary Brain: From Brain Dynamics To Conscious Experiences

How do our brains so effectively achieve adaptive behavior in a changing world? Evidence is reviewed that brains are organized into parallel processing streams with complementary properties. Hierarchical interactions within each stream and parallel interactions between streams create coherent behavioral representations that overcome the complementary deficiencies of each stream and support unitary conscious experiences. This perspective suggests how brain design reflects the organization of the physical world with which brains interact, and suggests an alternative to the computer metaphor suggesting that brains are organized into independent modules. Examples from perception, learning, cognition, and action are described, and theoretical concepts and mechanisms by which complementarity is accomplished are summarized.Defense Advanced Research Projects and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409); National Science Foundation (ITI-97-20333); Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0657

Involvement of Industry in the National High Performance Computing and Communication Enterprise

We discuss aspects of a national computer science agenda for High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC). We agree with the general direction and emphasis of the current program. In particular, the strong experimental component and linkage of applications with computer science should be continued. We recommend accelerating the emphasis on national challenges with more applications and technologies from the information, as compared to simulation areas. We suggest modifying the grand challenge concept to complement the current teaming of particular computer science and applications researchers. We would emphasize better linking of each application group to the entire (inter) national computer science activity. We express this in terms of a virtual corporation metaphor. The same approach can be used to involve industry in HPCC for both the consumers of HPCC technology (application industries) and producers---Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and the hardware system companies. We illustrate this approach with InfoMall, a HPCC technology transfer program funded by New York State. The federal program should have greater incentives for the involvement of both ISV’s and their products

Investigating the Proposed Affordances and Limitations of the Substance Metaphor for Energy

This study explores the instructional advantages and disadvantages of representing energy as a material substance; this is done in the context of a computer simulation that illustrates processes of energy transfer and transformation. These affordances and limitations have been proposed in science education literature as extensions of the substance metaphor itself, but there is little empirical evidence to support them. This study is intended to provide preliminary empirical evidence for these affordances and limitations. We examine data from eight interviews conducted with students from Seattle Pacific University’s introductory physics classes as they used the simulation. We explore the hypotheses that (i) student and (ii) instructional use of the substance metaphor promote specific affordances and limitations mentioned in the literature. We compare the language used and the affordances and limitations demonstrated by students as they interact with two forms of the simulation: one with an explicit substance metaphor and one without

The 12th Annual Graduate Research Symposium 2021 Poster TU Dublin: How to Recruit and Retain Women in Computer Science

While in recent decades a number of efforts have been coordinated to address the issue of gender imbalance in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, the problem still persists. Many authors speak of the ‘leaky’ pipeline metaphor that describes the loss of women in STEM areas before reaching senior roles. Research shows that women who leave are unlikely to return. The issue is particularly severe in the area of computer science, where women represent less than 20% of the labour force across the EU. This poster introduces a summary of findings from the literature on how to effectively recruit and retain women in computer science education. The focus was to identify initiatives with demonstrated impact that targeted mainly female undergraduate computing, computer science and technology students. This work considers the initiatives and interventions reported by the academic community, but also includes success stories from the non-academic sources around the globe, such as international equality awards submissions and online reports from universities, non-profit organisations and personal practices. Sources in languages other than English have also been considered. Practical initiatives that showed impact (which we call ‘Actions’) were identified and categorised into four groups comprising Policy, Pedagogy, Promotion and Influence. Each category is arranged into sub-groups and examples of actions that showed impact are provided for each of these groups. This research aims to help the wider community to get one step closer towards gender balance in computer science

ADOPTING IMMUNOLOGICAL METAPHORS IN CYBERSECURITY APPLICATIONS

The evolution of the computer virus remains constant, yet the metaphors used to explain the abstract ideas of computer science remain static. Previous cybersecurity research frames issues of security in physical security metaphors, using tangible ideas or icons, such as castles, to illustrate the need for defense-in-depth models for computer security. Research confirms that security techniques drawn from the castle metaphor serve to prevent infection by a previously identified variant of the virus, but those techniques are weak against novel strain or zero-day exploit. This thesis set out to answer the following question: What role can metaphors from emergent fields play in augmenting the dominant metaphors in cybersecurity applications? This research found metaphors provide limits for defenses and often carry assumptions about system design with them, allowing exploitation in unusual ways. When attacking computer systems designed around physical security models, malicious actors may take advantage of a system’s inherent weak points, and infection is inevitable in any networked system. Because complex attacks cannot be prevented by adopting ideas from a single metaphor or discipline of study, this thesis proposes reimagining cybersecurity threats through a wide variety of metaphorical lenses and adopting a plurality of defenses to augment physical security or defense-in-depth metaphors when addressing wicked problems in cybersecurity applications.Civilian, Department of Homeland SecurityApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Technology, Hyperbole, and Irony

Except for metaphor, tropes are arguably irrelevant to the analysis of science and technology. Among tropes, moreover, hyperbole and irony seem particularly ill-suited as the former exaggerates, while the latter undermines, two strategies at odds with a language intent on closely following the contours of the world of experience. While neither hyperbole nor irony has a place in the professional discourses of science and technology, both play a role in their popular representations. Hyperbole expresses our sense that these achievements exemplify the sublime, a form of experience applied at first to feelings of awe generated by great literature, then in succession to natural wonders like the Grand Canyon, triumphs of science like Newtonian physics, and such technological achievements as the computer and the Large Hadron Collider. While the Collider, the largest and most powerful experimental apparatus ever built, is an unalloyed technological triumph worthy of hyperbole, some of the alterations in social life that the computer has ushered in are open to skeptical debate. This is especially true to the extent that computer-facilitated communication has taken the place of the face-to face interaction that makes a robust social life possible. Irony is this skepticism’s vehicle