Gregory Chaitin has devoted his life to the attempt to understand what mathematics can and cannot achieve, and is a member of the digital philosophy/digital physics movement. Its members believe that the world is built out of digital information, out of 0 and 1 bits, and they view the universe as a giant information-processing machine, a giant digital computer. In this book on the history of ideas, Chaitin traces digital philosophy back to the nearly-forgotten 17th century genius Leibniz. He also tells us how he discovered the celebrated Omega number, which marks the current boundary of what mathematics can achieve. This book is an opportunity to get inside the head of a creative mathematician and see what makes him tick, and opens a window for its readers onto a glittering world of high-altitude thought that few intellectual mountain climbers can ever glimpse.

Researchers have overcome a major obstacle to generating random numbers on quantum computers by limiting the possibilities in the otherwise unlimited randomness of a set of quantum particles.

Random numbers play a key role in classical computing by providing an element of chance in games and simulations, a reliable method for encrypting messages, and a means of accurately sampling huge amounts of data.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Atomic Energy Commission in Argentina have shown that short sequences of random operations—randomly shifting laser pulses or magnetic fields—acting on a string of quantum bits can, in effect, generate random configurations of qubits.

Psuedo-random number generators provide a useful and well-defined example of the importance of context. We can make a PRNG that is completely indistinguishable in its output from a "true" RNG.

This is analogous to the "free will" vs determinism problem.

It ain't over till it's over.
- Yogi Berra

A New Kind of Science
Copyright 2002
By Stephen Wolfram
A New Kind of Science, raised expectations that some great new understanding was about to be shared with the world, but now here it is, and many are disappointed. It's an impressive work, with roughly a thousand high quality images, but the author's incredible ego, and overly wordy style get in the way of readability. Written during ten years in isolation and without feedback from the scientific community, the book suffers from lack of acknowledgement of the work of others, and questionable accuracy in some areas.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Copyright 2001