https://www.artsy.net/artwork/gerald-sussman-scheme
In an imagined future academic discipline called the Archaeology of Computer Science, the Scheme-81 chip may be regarded as an artifact on par with the Diamond Sutra.
The computing dialect Scheme—created in the 1970s by Gerald Sussman and his doctoral student Guy L. Steele Jr.—was the primary educational computer programming language in use at MIT for decades, a tool by which untold numbers of influential computer scientists were taught how to render algorithms in the form of elegant code. Then in the 1980s, Sussman and his team took it up a notch.
Moving forward from Scheme, hitherto confined to the software realm, the Sussman-led group conceived a hardware implementation of the language. The chip that resulted from their work, in 1981, represents one of the first efforts to apply artificial intelligence technology to the computer-aided design of integrated circuits. Here were algorithms expressed as hardware; wires doing the work of code—and without this the world we know today would not exist. Scheme, along with its parent language Lisp, led to many now-commonplace technologies—including laser printing, windowing systems, computer mice, high-resolution bit-mapped graphics, and computer graphic rendering. Here were algorithms expressed as hardware, wires doing the work of code—and without this, the world we know today would not exist.
Read the technologist's statement. [https://www.artsy.net/post/ruse-laboratories-gerald-sussman]
This lot includes two Scheme-81 computer chips, signed by Gerald Sussman. This lot also includes a commemorative 3D-printed Babylonian styled tablet containing the password to a private Github repository where the buyer may access an image of the Scheme-81 chips. The tablet is in two parts with combined dimensions 6.9 x 3.4 x .76 in.
Be sure to read Sussman's statement and despair at how close we were to a Scheme Machine. Sad!
They also had the original assembly code for Abelson's turtle graphics: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hal-abelson-turtle-geometry
>>1
Fetishization of parens soup processor, but now with commercial angle.
But this exclusive, signed by Sussman, unique and ancient technology,
the artifact of previous civilization.
Evidently these thing have a market..for people who think FPGA are mystical
cyberpunk tools and one-page lisp programs summon computer spirits.
Be sure to read Sussman's statement and despair at how close we were to a Scheme Machine. Sad!
By now, in post-apocalyptic LISP-less world, only a true hero wielding the SCHEME-81 Chip signed by Sussman's blood on a primary weapon slot can unleash the power of LISP MACHINE SPIRIT and create a truly LISP-based computer like McCarthy intended
(WITH lambda numerals).
>>3
The lore tells of terrible, dark winter of AI where researchers were hunted down
and Scheme-81 chips were burned in giant furnaces, with their source codes
by imperative ALGOLians who were eager to set their dominion on C-omputer Science once and for all. But LISP survived in part, in remote tower(made of ivory) the wizards Sussmman and Abelson created a pact with machine spirits:
their protection was only temporary before the C-based drones would
penetrate the protective Continuation field and destroy the last Scheme-81 Chip.
At this moment a noble warrior wield duel parens katana emerged from the Lambda mountains: his eyes were set on the ivory tower and his mission was to save the last chip. As darkness fell out of sky and C drones finished the last remnant of the tower and SUssman was signing the last chips with his
blood as desperate final ritual to ward off ALGOLian magic, the warrior
arrived. He came boldly to Sussman who recognized him as the disciple of
the Scheme Monks who studied gracefully and left a fond impression as he
juggled lambdas with ease and precision few dared to emulate,
With his last breath Sussman told him the secrets of the Chip and how to
evade the ALGOLian magic. As he hidden the chip in his belt,
heavy with the trepidation of life he will have to live in order to preserve
LISP. He seen how ALGOLians ruthlessly exterminated the LISP wizards.
The light of Lambda Mountains began to fade in the distance, the ALGOLians
have taken his homeland and were installing the UNIX regime.
With unbreakable determination he set out to travel north to the GNU country
a place where he could live in freedom and copyleft.
The parens-shaped katanas, named EVAL and APPLY set snuggly in his suit.
The ALGOLians didn't expect such power, as their parens were mass produced crooked brackets. Smooth parens sliced through cyberspace like butter, the brackets stumbled on the tiniest lines. ALGOLians often lost brackets without
realizing their place,hidden within fields of semicolons.
Moving forward from Scheme, hitherto confined to the software realm,
the machine spirits worked day and night, the plots of ALGOLians foiled each time. The search parties were blinded by Sepples-templates and many were lost
in segfaults in the ground. Who in their right mind would trust a Sepple?
ALGOLIan template temples furnished with stolen and reforged monads, imprisoned spirits
of computation desperate for freedom and enslaved to be part of Standard Library. There was no sign of simplicity, the intricate template-based
buildings were constructed on the spot, summoned from the dark type realm
where laws of logic and reality didn't exist.
>>1
It's absurd that we've developed modern consumer CPUs with neural nets before we've added basic necessities like garbage collection, types, and round-off free arithmetic. It's as if a society decided that universal basic juicero was more important than universal clean drinking water.
>>7
NPUs aren't neural nets.
It's as if a society decided that universal basic juicero was more important than universal clean drinking water.
Sounds accurate for current society.
NPUs aren't neural nets. Sounds accurate for current society.
That's what I get for trusting consumer electronics media. I do agree that it's more or less our society, increasingly so.
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY
Was it sold and for how much?
The Schemachine - a formally verified Scheme CPU:
https://legacy.cs.indiana.edu/ftp/techreports/TR544.pdf
>>11
I can't seem to find any information on that. The auction did get some press, like https://www.wired.com/2015/03/meet-thousand-dollar-algorithms-auction/, which gives the bids at the time of writing in the low thousands:
There’s also a printout of Abelson’s Turtle Geometry, the first algorithm president Obama coded last year at a middle school in New Jersey ($1,300); a license of Anthony Ferraro’s Hypothetical Beats, which converts algorithms into music ($2,250); a framed illustration depicting Ok Cupid’s compatibility algorithms ($1,800), and two framed Scheme-81 chips, the hardware implementation of Gerald Sussman’s Scheme coding dialect.
The fact that they gave the bids for every other item listed in the sentence and delineated the items with a semicolon, as is proper, but then switched to a comma in front of the Scheme-81 chips makes me think that they just slapped it on at the end as an afterthought and didn't even bother to properly proofread the article. I guess that's Wired's "journalism" for you.
>>12
Did it get verified against entropy and physics?
>>13
Physics bends to the rules of the Scheme machine, not the other way around.