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Thomas J. Misa

historian · 3 mentions across 1 reading

In this course

Thomas Misa appears to be a historian of technology whose work on Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine establishes crucial genealogies for algorithmic thought—specifically the conceptual invention of loops and recursion as foundational to both historical computation and modern AI. The course readings cite him to ground the argument that software concepts like recursion weren't merely discovered but were theoretically constructed through Lovelace's mathematical work, a move that historicizes what we now treat as natural features of computation. This matters for "Pandaemonium Architecture" because it suggests that the seemingly inevitable logic of contemporary machine learning has deeper roots in nineteenth-century mathematical imagination rather than emerging from engineering alone.

Mentioned in 1 reading

Notes on Thinking Machine Imaginaries_ Llull

Leibniz, and Lovelace to 'Shoggoth with a Smiley Face'

 3
sequence of instructions—that is, an algorithm” (Misa, below), the invention of the software loop and the nested loop (now called recursion, a process fundamental to contemporary artificial intelligence), while Note A suggested that machine…sequence of instructions—that is, an algorithm” (Misa, below), the invention of the software loop and the nested loop (now called recursion, a process fundamental to contemporary artificial intelligence), while Note A suggested that machine…7 Bonner, Anthony, ed. and tr. Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1232-1316). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. 8 Coudert, Allison P. Leibniz and the Kabbalah, in Leibniz, Mysticism, and Religion. Coudert, Allison P. , Popkin,…

Appears alongside

People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.

Ada Lovelace 2Charles Babbage 2Alan Mathison Turing 1Allison P. Coudert 1Anthony Bonner 1Donato Ricci 1Gilles Deleuze 1Gordon M. Weiner 1Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1Jonathan Swift 1Ramon Llull 1Richard H. Popkin 1Stuart Brown 1Tom Conley 1Valentin Goujon 1Yuen-Ting Lai 1Alan Turing 1

Pandaemonium Architecture 6.0 — ATEK-639/439 — Fall 2026 · QR code