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Some Thoughts on Computational Models: From Massive Human Computing to Abstract State Machines, and Beyond

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Logic, Computation and Rigorous Methods

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12750))

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Abstract

I sketch what I think led to the emergence of Abstract State Machines. A central role in this is played by the work of Ashok Chandra and David Harel on computable queries in databases. I also define Chandra-Harel Algebras, and analyse Blum-Shub-Smale computability over these algebras.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The book is divided into four parts. Part I. Logic and complexity, with [2, 9, 35, 60], Part II. Database Theory, with [61]. Part III. Analysis of algorithms with [10], and Concurrency and distributed algorithms, with [8, 11]. M. Karpinski and P. Martin-Loef did not contribute to the book.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Y. Gurevich, M. Prunescu and K.-D. Schewe for some critical remarks, and L. Beklemishev and D. Harel for the permission to include pictures they provided. All pictures our either in the public domain or courtesy their respective copyright owners.

The pictures of E. Stiefel, H. Rutishauser, P. Läuchli, N. Wirth and E. Engeler are taken from their respective pages of ETHZ. The pictures of the Curta and the Arithmometer belong to the National Museum of Computing and the Computer History Museum respectively. The picture of Yu. Ianov was provided by Alexey Yashunsky from the Keldysh institute were Ianov worked all his life. The pictures of J. Shepherdson is taken from his obituary [23]. The pictures of H. Friedman, N. Immerman and M. Vardi are from their Wikipedia entries. Finally, the pictures of L. Blum, F. Cucker, M. Shub and S. Smale was provided by them and also appears in the collected papers of S. Smale [24].

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  1. Department of Computer Science, Technion-IIT, Haifa, Israel

    J. A. Makowsky

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  1. J. A. Makowsky
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  1. Institut für Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany

    Alexander Raschke

  2. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Crema, Italy

    Elvinia Riccobene

  3. UIUC Institute, Zhejiang University, Haining, China

    Klaus-Dieter Schewe

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Makowsky, J.A. (2021). Some Thoughts on Computational Models: From Massive Human Computing to Abstract State Machines, and Beyond. In: Raschke, A., Riccobene, E., Schewe, KD. (eds) Logic, Computation and Rigorous Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12750. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76020-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76020-5_10

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