The Boundaries of Literature Symposium: Talk: “Uncomputable”

Boundaries of Literature Symposium Keynote Speaker, Dr. Alex Galloway from NYU, will present his talk, “Uncomputable.”

According to digital philosophers, the world is a computer and everything inside it is computable. But what about things that fall outside the bounds of the computable? Alan Turing demonstrated that there are kinds of problems that are computable and kinds of problems that are not, providing a theoretical answer to the question of the uncomputable. But there is also a practical answer: how many computer cycles do you have at your disposal and can you afford to crunch the numbers until the sun burns out? Within the digital, the uncomputable appears in logical paradoxes and rational incompleteness. Within the analog, the uncomputable weaves itself through affect and experience, through all those things that remain ungovernable, unspeakable, or unseeable. In this lecture we will explore the realm of the uncomputable, from the binary present to the non-binary future.