Welcome to the sixtieth (excuse me?) issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, closing its fifth year (the what?), and dedicated to bringing you Perspectives. In this edition we ask software workers worldwide to seize their power and make a better world with it; in the Library section, we review "The Computer" by Jens Müller and Julius Wiedemann; and in the Vidéothèque section, we watch a 1959 interview with Bertrand Russell.
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By All Means
The past five years have been, to put it mildly, rocky. A quick analysis of the current state of the world does not announce better days to come, in particular regarding the increasing challenges created by our negative influence on this planet's climate, and the seemingly uncontrollable rise of right-wing extremism around the world.
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Bertrand Russell
Philosophy is a weird subject. Many of us have had to learn some of it in high school, but we quickly dismissed it as we move forward in life, only to rediscover it as soon as we hit some midlife crisis along the way. Or, at least, that was the experience of this author. Yet philosophy is the only real bridge uniting all sciences, and as such deserves a much brighter spot on it. In particular, the road that led us to the computer was primarily built by philosophers, and in particular, by Bertrand Russell, whose 1959 interview is the subject of this month's Vidéothèque article.
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Jens Müller & Julius Wiedemann
None of the previous 48 entries in the Library section of this magazine have dealt with what is commonly referred to as a "coffee table book". Today we rectify such omission by showcasing a massive, recent, and by all standards, very desirable book from Taschen, the legendary German publishing house.
