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David Gelernter

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David Gelernter
Gelernter in 2011
Born
David Hillel Gelernter

(1955-03-05) March 5, 1955 (age 69)
Alma materYale University (B.A., 1976)
State University of New York at Stony Brook (Ph.D., 1982)
SpouseJane Gelernter
AwardsMember of the National Council on the Arts (2003)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Parallel computing
Judaism
Literature
Visual arts
InstitutionsYale University

David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an American computer scientist, artist, and writer. He is a professor of computer science at Yale University. He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, and sat on the National Endowment for the Arts.

He is known for contributions to parallel computation and for books on topics including computed worlds (Mirror Worlds), and what Gelernter sees as the destructive influence of liberal academia on American society, expressed in his book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). He has published articles in a number of publications.

In 1993 Gelernter was sent a mail bomb by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, which almost killed him and left him with permanent loss of use of his right hand, and permanent damage to his right eye.[1]

Life and work

David Gelernter grew up on Long Island, New York.[2] His father was computer science professor Herbert Gelernter, who taught at State University of New York at Stony Brook.[3] David is the grandson of a rabbi, grew up a Reform Jew, and later became an Orthodox Jew.[4] He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in Classical Hebrew literature from Yale University in 1976.[citation needed] He earned his Ph.D. from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982.[2]

In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system he and Nicholas Carriero designed (which he named for Linda Lovelace, the lead actress in the porn movie Deep Throat, mocking Ada's tribute to the scientist and first attributed computer programmer, Ada Lovelace).[5][2] Bill Joy cited Linda as the inspiration for many elements of JavaSpaces and Jini.[6]

On June 24, 1993, Gelernter was severely injured opening a mail bomb sent to him by the Unabomber. He recovered from his injuries, but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged.[7] Some in the press suggested that there were parallel between his thoughts on the need for a human element to computers and those of the Unabomber.[2] He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.[citation needed] Two years after the bombing, the Unabomber sent Gelernter a letter, writing: "People with advanced degrees aren’t as smart as they think they are." [8]

Gelernter helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his 1992 book Mirror Worlds. Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks, by organizing their data. The product never took off, however.[9] The company ceased operations in 2004.[9] In 2013, a related company that had purchased its patents, Mirror Worlds, LLC, filed a complaint of patent infringement against Apple, Best Buy, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo (United States), Lenovo Group, Microsoft, Samsung Electronic, and Samsung TeleCommunications in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.[10] Ultimately, the company lost at the trial level and on appeal.[9] A petition for writ of certiorari to have the case considered by the Supreme Court of the United States was denied in 2013.[11] In 2016, the case was dismissed with prejudice.[10]

In 2003, he became a member of the National Council on the Arts.[12]

Gelernter has critiqued what he perceives as cultural illiteracy among students. In 2015, he commented, "They [students] know nothing about art. They know nothing about history. They know nothing about philosophy. And because they have been raised as not even atheists, they don't rise to the level of atheists, insofar as they've never thought about the existence or nonexistence of God. It has never occurred to them. They know nothing about the Bible."[13]

His paintings have been exhibited in New Haven and Manhattan.

Political views

Time Magazine profiled Gelernter in 2016, describing him as a "stubbornly independent thinker. A conservative among mostly liberal Ivy League professors, a religious believer among the often disbelieving ranks of computer scientists."[14] In October 2016, he wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal endorsing Donald Trump for President, calling Hillary Clinton "as phony as a three-dollar bill," and saying that Barack Obama "has governed like a third-rate tyrant."[15]

He has spoken out again women in the workforce, saying working mothers were harming their children and should stay at home.[8]

He has also argued for the U.S. voting age to be raised, on the basis that 18-year-olds are not sufficiently mature.[16]

Controversial positions on science

A conversation with David Gelernter in 2010

The Washington Post, profiling him in early 2017 as a potential science advisor to Donald Trump, called him "a vehement critic of modern academia" who has "condemned 'belligerent leftists' and blamed intellectualism for the disintegration of patriotism and traditional family values."[17] Shortly thereafter, The Atlantic published a rebuttal of the Washington Post profile, saying it was "hard to imagine a more misleading treatment" of the "pioneering polymath" Gelernter.[18]

Gelernter "expressed skepticism about the reality" of anthropogenic climate change.[19] His view on climate change is out of step with the overwhelming scientific consensus.[20]

In July 2019, Gelernter challenged Darwin's theories.[21] In a review of Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, which Gelernter wrote for the Claremont Review of Books, Gelernter does not accept evolution "as Darwin presents it".[21] On the other hand, Gelernter stipulates he "cannot accept" intelligent design either, saying that "as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go."[22] In "A Response to David Gelernter’s Attack on Evolution," Patheos, August 26, 2019, Bob Seidensticker writes: "Let’s subtitle this story, 'Guy who made his career in not-biology is convinced by other not-biologists that Biology’s core theory is wrong.'"[23] Computer scientist and mathematician Jeffrey Shallit wrote: "Gelernter's review was not published in a science journal, but in a politics journal run by a far-right think tank. His review cites no scientific publications at all, and makes claims like 'Many biologists agree' and 'Most biologists think' without giving any supporting citations. So, not surprisingly ... Gelernter makes a fool of himself in his review, which resembles a 'greatest hits' of creationist misconceptions and lies."[24]

Books and book reviews

External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Gelernter on Drawing Life, November 16, 1997, C-SPAN

Gelernter's book Mirror Worlds (1991) "prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web."[25] Bill Joy, founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, said Gelernter was "one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time."[25] The New York Times called him a computer science "rock star".[26]

In The Muse in the Machine (1994), he theorized that creativity is based on the degree to which people focus their attention, arguing that "low focus," when their attention is wandering or emotions interfere with rationality, is when they are creative.[27] His book was harshly criticized.[28] Psychologist Stuart Sutherland, writing in Nature, called the theory wrong.[29] Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, director of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, wrote: "It makes a great story, but if you look at the contemporary records and autobiographies, it doesn't work that way."[30]

In America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats), Gelernter argued that American higher education no longer cares about producing well-rounded and cultured students; academics instead believe their role is to dictate how other Americans live and think. Scottish columnist Stephen Daisley wrote in Commentary magazine that Gelernter portrayed Obama's presidency as a symbol of the failure of American education and the success of its replacement with a liberal indoctrination system. As a solution, Gelernter proposed moving all of human knowledge to online servers so that the in-person college experience can be replaced by user-driven self-education. Daisley wrote, "America-Lite is lean, incisive convincing, delightfully indelicate, and, in a break from the conventions of the literature on education, honest. It is a fine dissection—de-construction, if you must—of the corruption of higher education and the resulting debasement of political culture. If it makes its way on to a single college reading list, Hell will have frozen over."[31]

Historian Russell Jacoby was critical in his review of Gelernter's book America-Lite, saying it contained insufficient arguments. Jacoby wrote that Gelernter blamed Jews for causing the breakdown of patriotism and the traditional family, writing "Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education."[32] In his 2009 book Judaism: A Way of Being, he wrote that God has withdrawn from the modern world, that Reform and Conservative Judaism do not work, that the purpose of life is to marry and rear a family, and that the feminist effort for male and female equality: "is an act of aggression against both sanctity and humanity."[33]

Selected works

Books

  • With David Padua and Alexandru Nicolau. Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech. Pr., 1990.
  • With Suresh Jagannathan. Programming Linguistics. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech., 1990.
  • With Nicholas Carriero. How to Write Parallel Programs: A first course. Hardcover ed. Mass. Instit. of Tech. Pr., 1990.
  • Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean. 1st ed. Oxford Univ. Pr., 1992.
  • The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought. Hardcover ed. MacMillan, Inc., 1994.
  • 1939: the Lost World of the Fair. Paperback ed. HarperCollins Pub., 1996.
  • Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. Hardcover ed. Simon & Schuster Adult Pub. Group, 1997.
  • The Aesthetics of Computing. Paperback ed. Phoenix (Orion Books Ltd, UK), 1998.
  • Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology. Paperback ed. Perseus Pub., 1998.
  • Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. Hardcover ed. Doubleday., 2007.
  • Judaism: A Way of Being. Yale University Press, 2009.
  • America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). Encounter Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1594036064
  • The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness. Liveright, 2016. W.W. Norton. ISBN 9781631492495

Articles

Gelernter contributes to magazines such as City Journal, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary which are generally considered neoconservative.[citation needed] For seven months, he contributed a weekly op-ed column to the LA Times.[citation needed] He has published in The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

References

  1. ^ "Unabomber's act still affects prof. Gelernter". yaledailynews.com.
  2. ^ a b c d Henderson, Harry (May 14, 2014). "A to Z of Computer Scientists". Infobase Publishing – via Google Books.
  3. ^ "A Life That Made Sense," by David Gelernter, The Weekly Standard, September 7, 2015, at 5.
  4. ^ "Judaism: A Way of Being," by Juliana Ochs, Public Broadcasting Service, January 7, 2010.
  5. ^ Markoff, John (January 19, 1992). "David Gelernter's Romance With Linda". The New York Times.
  6. ^ "More than just another pretty name – SunWorld – August 1998". Sunsite.uakom.sk. Retrieved 2013-02-10.
  7. ^ "Apple Challenges Big Award Over Patents". The New York Times. October 4, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-05. Professor Gelernter, a renowned technology pioneer, sustained serious injuries to his right hand and eye from an explosive package sent to him in 1993 by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber.
  8. ^ a b [1]
  9. ^ a b c Mullin, Joe (July 12, 2016). "Apple will pay $25M to patent troll to avoid East Texas trial". Ars Technica.
  10. ^ a b "Mirror Worlds Technologies, LLC v. Apple Inc. et al". Justia Dockets & Filings.
  11. ^ "Mirror Worlds, LLC v. Apple Inc". SCOTUSblog.
  12. ^ "NEA News Room: Five New Members of National Council on the Arts Welcomed by National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia". Nea.gov. 2003-04-10. Archived from the original on 2013-01-27. Retrieved 2013-02-10.
  13. ^ "David Gelernter on the Dumbing Down of the US, Computer Science,& Art".
  14. ^ "Encounters with the Arch-Genius, David Gelernter". Time.
  15. ^ Gerlernter, David (2016-10-14). "Trump and the Emasculated Voter". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
  16. ^ Gelernter, David (2020-07-28). "Eighteen Is Too Young to Vote". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-08-01.
  17. ^ Kaplan, Sarah (January 18, 2017), "David Gelernter, fiercely anti-intellectual computer scientist, is being eyed for Trump's science adviser", Speaking of Science, The Washington Post.
  18. ^ Friedersdorf, Conor (February 23, 2017). "20 Ideas From the Mind of David Gelernter". The Atlantic.
  19. ^ O'Daly, Britton (25 January 2017). "Gelernter, potential science advisor to Trump, denies man-made climate change". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
  20. ^ "Gelernter, potential science advisor to Trump, denies man-made climate change". yaledailynews.com.
  21. ^ a b Kabbany, Jennifer (July 30, 2019). "Famed Yale computer science professor quits believing Darwin's theories". The College Fix. Retrieved July 30, 2019.
  22. ^ https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/
  23. ^ Examined, Cross (August 26, 2019). "A Response to David Gelernter's Attack on Evolution".
  24. ^ Shallit, Jeffrey (August 2, 2019). "Recursivity: David Gelernter Makes a Fool of Himself Again".
  25. ^ a b John Markoff, technology writer and New York Times reporter in an interview with David Gelernter
  26. ^ Schwartz, John. New Economy; Selling a Vision of the Future beyond Folders. NY Times, 7/2/01
  27. ^ [2]
  28. ^ [3]
  29. ^ [4]
  30. ^ [5]
  31. ^ Daisley, Stephen (June 2012). "Reign of Ignorance". Commentary: 64–65.
  32. ^ "Dreaming of a World Without Intellectuals". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2012-07-16.
  33. ^ "Judaism: A Way of Being | January 7, 2010 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS". January 7, 2010.

Further reading

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