Nicolas Reimen on Wittgenstein

Ecris le 19 juillet 2005
Dans la catégorie Uncategorized |

Yesterday, I had the opportunity with other colleagues from OCTO to listen to Nicolas Reimen conference on the philosophical origins of Computer Sciences.

Nicolas is both a philosopher and an IT manager with many years of experiences in both fields. This allowed him to conduct a quite amazing analysis of how Turing and Von Neuman have influenced the common way of designing IT systems, and why this might lead to current difficulties in the way IT projects are managed.One of the central ideas I think I have understood is that Wittgenstein had discovered as soon as the 50s why applying only Turing/Von Neuman approach to rationalize and unify digital processing leaded us to a dead end. This objective is simply impossible to achieve and does not make sense. By extension, trying to improve IS quality by producing documents describing and analyzing IT systems lead also to a dead end, and should not be the primary objectives of IT managers.

I will not try to explain furthermore Nicolas?s ideas, as I don?t feel I have the philosophical skills and background that enable me to try this exercise today.

However, I hope I have created interest for you to have a deeper look to Nicolas Reimein work. I think I should try myself to read more from this Mr Wittengstein
References:http://www.lwmis.org/http://www.pathways.plus.com/isfp/businesspathways/issue16.html