Customer Reviews

The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations

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The master machinator is at it again, explaining computer science in ways that are offbeat, understandable and exciting. Yes, it is true that a functional computer was built by students at M. I. T. using Tinkertoys, and it played a mean game of tic-tac-toe. While fun to think about and look at, this idea contains much that is deeply significant. As those exposed to Turing Machines know, located in chapter six of this book and found in Dewdney's other works, computer computations are built using very simple base models. There is no theoretical distinction between the actions of a Tinkertoy computer and the fastest supercomputer. The ultimate capabilities of computers, if such things really exist, are not a function of the complexity of the base operations.
Which leads to the discussion of a heated debate taking place in and around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community. Arguers against the notion of true machine intelligence use the underlying simplicity of computer computations to refute the idea that machines can ever develop self-awareness. Which is now becoming the irrefutable proof of true AI, supplanting the Turing test. Dewdney handles this philosophical discussion very well, posing his own questions. Such as, will we ever truly know what thinking really is?
Chaotic music, neural networks, programming Star Trek and golf games; computers that "passed" the Turing test and computer sculptures are just some of the additional material covered. The number of ways Dewdney finds to further explain computer science is nothing short of amazing.
Another in a growing list of superb primers in computer science by this author, one can only hope that they keep coming. Each essay is a jewel to be treasured and pondered.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

This book is ideal for anyone who likes to tinker with computers and/or is into programming, electroincs, math, or physics. It is a composition of mental explorations which range from building a computer out of tinkertoys to chaos theory, computer-generated music, and fractal geometry. Most chapters are easy reads, but a couple get a little dry. Overall it was a very enjoyable, thought-provoking book.

I read this book years ago in a Barnes and Noble, almost cover to cover in an afternoon. Don't know WHY I didn't purchase it then. A few months later it was gone, they couldn't order it and I could only find the "Collector's" scalper fee online.


I like this book because it's a good educational book in how to think. The writer was essentially trying to teach his skills to MIT students who mostly came in to class on the cutting edge, how to teach anything. I take the lesson of his computer (a difference engine, btw) as an education that all computers no matter how you make them/what you use are a collection of switches and it's a matter of representing what the problem is then transferring the changes and decoding the results that produces the desired effects.