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Essay on Introduction to the theory of Computation
The theory of computation has become what might be called the dominant Meta theory of a number of fields, including artificial intelligence, organizational theory, and communication theory--to the point, indeed, that it could be fairly described as a genuine exemplar of that seriously over-used term, a paradigm. A paradigm is a pattern of seeing so elementary that it is capable of informing many diverse intellectual activities, without necessarily being recognized as doing so 3. Earlier societies used the concept of body, organism, or machine in this way; ours, since the 1940s, has been mesmerized by the computer. Communication scholars need to be self-aware of their own tacit reliance on the computation paradigm, especially because it is now an area of intense controversy, which places its continued paradigmatic status very much in doubt.
The theory of computation furnishes the same scaffolding of ideas that led to the design and building of a general purpose digital computer but that event, although salient in the popular imagination, is just the tip of an iceberg. The theory of computation does indeed underlie the making of an artifact called a computer, but it has wider ramifications that carry us into what might seem at first glance to be nonobvious applications, namely, organization and communication theory.
The theory of computation is currently in turmoil, and has branched into two theories, based on quite different (and in some respects contradictory) principles of what it means to compute, and thus how one might explain organization and/or communication in terms of a computational language. To lead into this inquiry, we need to give a brief introduction to the conventional theory.
Thus the theory of computation is now undergoing a revolution from the inside.
Here we will discuss Sipser’s "Introduction to the theory of Computation".
Introduction to the Theory of Computation provides a mathematical treatment of computation theory grounded in theorems and proofs....
