Dr. Benjamin Schumacher – Kenyon College
“Entropy, Randomness and the Physics of Computation”
Computers are physical devices, and computations must be physical processes. Anyone who has used a laptop computer on an actual lap knows that computers produce waste heat. How much of this thermodynamic irreversibility is really necessary, and how much is due to imperfect design? We will explore the borderland between thermodynamics and the theory of computation. Topics include: Maxwell’s demon, two slogans for the revolution, a new view of the Second Law, trash compactors, the definition of “random”, and Godel’s theorem.