Randomness
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To those interested in randomness and expressive culture, perhaps the most intriguing element of Knuth’s magisterial discussion of random number appears in a footnote. Knuth recalls a CBS television documentary in 1960 called “The Thinking Machine” which featured “two Western-style playlets” written by a computer (Knuth, 1969, 158-160). In fact, three playlets were acted out on national television that day in October, 1960, generated by a TX-0 computer housed at MIT’s Electronics Systems Laboratory. As journalist John Pfeiffer noted in a book released two years after the documentary, SAGA II, the script-writing program behind the mini-Westerns, took programmers Douglas Ross and Harrison Morse two months and fifty-five hundred instructions to develop (Pfeiffer, 1962, 130-138). The key to SAGA II were its thirty “switches,” which made “various alternative or branching paths” possible (136). "Among other things,” Pfeiffer observed, “the robber may go to the window and look out and then go to the table, or he may go to the table directly. You cannot tell in advance which one of these alternatives the program will select, because it does the equivalent of rolling a pair of dice” (136). | To those interested in randomness and expressive culture, perhaps the most intriguing element of Knuth’s magisterial discussion of random number appears in a footnote. Knuth recalls a CBS television documentary in 1960 called “The Thinking Machine” which featured “two Western-style playlets” written by a computer (Knuth, 1969, 158-160). In fact, three playlets were acted out on national television that day in October, 1960, generated by a TX-0 computer housed at MIT’s Electronics Systems Laboratory. As journalist John Pfeiffer noted in a book released two years after the documentary, SAGA II, the script-writing program behind the mini-Westerns, took programmers Douglas Ross and Harrison Morse two months and fifty-five hundred instructions to develop (Pfeiffer, 1962, 130-138). The key to SAGA II were its thirty “switches,” which made “various alternative or branching paths” possible (136). "Among other things,” Pfeiffer observed, “the robber may go to the window and look out and then go to the table, or he may go to the table directly. You cannot tell in advance which one of these alternatives the program will select, because it does the equivalent of rolling a pair of dice” (136). | ||
| − | Today, randomness in computing retains its character of predictability yet within constraints. Its nature has been exploited for practical purposes, such as security and communication. For instance, random numbers are used in encryption processes to make login passwords more secure. Intriguingly, the algorithms used and even their source code may be fully explained and published, but the data remain secure. Why? Because the space which random numbers occupy is so mind-bogglingly large, that no human being or computer could ever traverse it completely. Imagine playing a guessing game with a friend from 1 to 10. You can guess the number pretty easily, right? But what if the range of possible numbers was as large as the number of grains of sand a beach? Could you ever try all of those possibilities? Maybe it isn't as intuitive as it could be, but after an afternoon of playing with the RND on the function in BASIC, you may find that it makes more sense than before. If you want to try it for yourself, consider this program, which is really only a modest variation of 10Print. | + | Today, randomness in computing retains its character of predictability yet within constraints. Its nature has been exploited for practical purposes, such as security and communication. For instance, random numbers are used in encryption processes to make login passwords more secure. Intriguingly, the algorithms used and even their source code may be fully explained and published, but the data remain secure. Why? Because the space which random numbers occupy is so mind-bogglingly large, that no human being or computer could ever traverse it completely. Imagine playing a guessing game with a friend from 1 to 10. You can guess the number pretty easily, right? But what if the range of possible numbers was as large as the number of grains of sand a beach? Could you ever try all of those possibilities? Maybe it isn't as intuitive as it could be, but after an afternoon of playing with the RND on the function in BASIC, you may find that it makes more sense than before. If you want to try it for yourself, consider this program, which is really only a modest variation of 10 PRINT. |
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