Beyond Turing

Table of contents

Beyond Turing: The Incalculable Remainder

Where the Algorithm halts, the Human begins

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✦Preface+
PBeyond Turing: The Incalculable RemainderWhere the Algorithm Halts, the Human Begins+

PART ONE - THE METHOD

Every honest journey begins by declaring its tools. This first Part hands the reader the two that will serve for the whole road: a map, which says where the book is going, and a method, which says how it looks at things - five lenses to be passed, one after another, over the same object. And right after that it delivers the most surprising news of the entire work: the limit of machines is not an opinion held by philosophers, it is a theorem proved by mathematicians. It was the father of computation himself, Alan Turing, who demonstrated that there are boundaries no computer will ever cross. Whoever fears that this book sets feeling against science will discover here the opposite: it is science, first of all, that marks the exact point where computation stops. From that point onwards begins all the rest - and the whole book.

1The Map and the MethodThe Engineering of Knowledge: five lenses and four theses for an operative epistemology in the age of AI+
  1. 1.1The two languages and the problem of the bridge
  2. 1.2The five transversal lenses
  3. 1.3The operative epistemology: the four theses
  4. 1.4The map: seven territories, a single journey
  5. 1.5The remainder of the method: the map is not the territory
2The Machine and the LimitTuring, Gödel and the mathematical foundation of the incalculable remainder+
  1. 2.1The Turing machine: what it means to compute
  2. 2.2The halting problem: the boundary proved
  3. 2.3Gödel: truth exceeds proof
  4. 2.4The imitation game: what the Turing test measures
  5. 2.5The mathematical remainder: why "beyond" Turing

PART TWO - THE BODY

The journey now enters the most intimate territory: the body, and its health. It is the most technical Part of the book - sensors, signals, thresholds, the architectures of connected medicine - and at the same time the most delicate, because here every datum has a heartbeat and every measurement touches a life. It starts from the panorama of digital healthcare and climbs, chapter after chapter, from the measurable towards the irreducible: the signal that is not the symptom, the sensor that does not decide alone, the measured body that does not coincide with the lived body, the brain that must be kept safe like no other data in the world, care that spreads across a network without ceasing to have a face. The reader will find much engineering, and will find it rigorous; and will find, in every chapter, the same discovery: the more precise the measurement becomes, the more clearly appears what will not let itself be measured.

3Artificial Intelligence, IoT and Big Data in HealthcareTowards predictive and personalized medicine+
  1. 3.1Introduction
  2. 3.2Wearable Devices and Telerehabilitation
  3. 3.3Big Data Analytics and Public Health
  4. 3.4AI and Enterprise Information Systems in Healthcare
  5. 3.5Stanford Specialization: A New Frontier
  6. 3.6Epistemology and Innovation: A Reflection
  7. 3.7Conclusions and Perspectives
  8. 3.8Equitable access to technologies, avoiding new inequalities
4Signal and SymptomEngineering intelligent medical devices in the age of connected medicine+
  1. 4.1The signal as measurable quantity
  2. 4.2The symptom as irreducible clinical category
  3. 4.3IoMT architectures and risk classification
  4. 4.4From acquisition to decision: the governed clinical pipeline
  5. 4.5The clinical remainder
5The Sensor and the ThresholdWearable architectures for tele-health under EU Regulation 2024/1689 and the evolving MDR+
  1. 5.1The sensor as measurement instrument and ineliminable uncertainty
  2. 5.2Sensor fusion and the geometry of decision
  3. 5.3Regulatory qualification: medical device and risk classification
  4. 5.4Human oversight and the problem of clinical cognitive load
  5. 5.5The threshold as design invariant
6The Body and the SensorFrom biological measurability to bodily existence: why the wearable does not inhabit the body it monitors+
  1. 6.1The technical architecture: wearables, biosensors, edge computing
  2. 6.2The body as object: Körper and the Cartesian reduction
  3. 6.3The body as subject: Leib, Sein-zum-Tode, and the ontological difference
  4. 6.4Biological correlation and existential understanding
  5. 6.5The incalculable remainder: toward an engineering of bodily dignity
7The Brain and the KeepingNeurotechnology, mental integrity and the ontological limit of “reading thought”+
  1. 7.1The technical domain of brain-computer interfaces
  2. 7.2The threshold: from signal to meaning
  3. 7.3Neurorights and regulatory gaps
  4. 7.4The convergence of traditions: keeping
  5. 7.5Sub tutela Dei: five design invariants
8The Network and the NodeFederated learning, edge computing and distributed architectures for tele-health under the EU AI Act and MDR+
  1. 8.1The centralisation problem and clinical-data sovereignty
  2. 8.2Federated architecture: from gradient averaging to the topology of trust
  3. 8.3The node: edge computing, TinyML, and situated computation
  4. 8.4Privacy as technical stratification and the mathematics of trust
  5. 8.5The network as regulatory fabric: who answers in distributed architecture

PART THREE - THE HOME

The smallest territory of the journey is also the most decisive: the rooms where we grow up. The Preface declared that the family is the first place where a human being discovers that he exists and that he matters; this Part takes that conviction seriously and carries it to where the game is really played today: in front of the screens. A single chapter, because the home does not need many words but exact ones: what, technically, is the attention economy that enters our children's pockets; what the science of development says; what the school and its new tools can do; and what remains, undelegable and unautomatable, of the oldest task in the world: to educate - which is not to surveil, and is not to download. It is to draw out.

9The Child and the ScreenThe attention economy, algorithmic tutors and the family's educational task in the era of devices that learn+
  1. 9.1The screen as artefact: the engineering of attention
  2. 9.2The child: a development that cannot be accelerated
  3. 9.3The school and the teacher: knowledge transmitted through relationship
  4. 9.4The home and the rule: governing the tool, safeguarding trust
  5. 9.5The filial remainder: what no screen can give

PART FOUR - THE ENTERPRISE

From the home to the enterprise: the territory where data becomes decisions, and decisions become organisation. It is the realm of information systems - the pipelines that turn events into profiles, profiles into scores, scores into actions - and this Part crosses it with the eyes of one who designs and teaches those systems: the datum that represents a subject without exhausting it, the pipeline that must be governed so that someone answers for it, the customer whom the profile describes and does not contain. The last chapter finally enters where the theme becomes personal for everyone: work, its measure and its dignity - because the first 'profiled' person of every enterprise is not the customer: it is the one who works inside it.

10Data and SubjectInformation systems engineering in the age of algorithmic profiling+
  1. 10.1The datum as engineering artefact
  2. 10.2The subject as legal-technical category
  3. 10.3Algorithmic profiling and high-risk systems
  4. 10.4Human oversight architectures and explainability
  5. 10.5The irreducible remainder
11The Pipeline and GovernanceInformation systems engineering in the era of algorithmic governance+
  1. 11.1The pipeline as engineering artifact
  2. 11.2Governance as legal-technical category
  3. 11.3Human oversight architectures and auditability
  4. 11.4Lineage, audit trail, and verifiable traceability
  5. 11.5The irreducible remainder
12The Customer and the ProfileThe CRM profiling pipeline as a problem in the engineering of information-processing systems+
  1. 12.1Introduction
  2. 12.2Identity: resolving the subject
  3. 12.3Category: segmenting behaviour
  4. 12.4Prediction: from segment to score
  5. 12.5Action: closing the loop
  6. 12.6The threshold: automated and assisted decision
13Work and MeasureAlgorithmic management, measured productivity and the dignity of the craft in the enterprise information system+
  1. 13.1The measure as artefact: from the stopwatch to algorithmic management
  2. 13.2Goodhart's law: when the measure devours the craft
  3. 13.3The score and the merit: the worker before the platform
  4. 13.4Dignity and the organization: measuring in the service of people
  5. 13.5The professional remainder: what no time card records

PART FIVE - THE CITY

The gaze widens to the public scale: the city, where algorithms meet power, justice and war - the three places where the stakes are no longer efficiency but freedom. It begins with who commands the machines, and with the ideas that guide those who own them; it then enters the courtroom, where the presumption of innocence meets risk scores and where it is decided whether a man coincides with his past; it ends in the extreme territory, conflict, where a record becomes a target. It is the sternest Part of the book, and it is written under its firmest rule: no trial of persons, the utmost rigour on systems - because it is precisely when the stakes are highest that the difference between calculating and judging becomes a question of civilisation.

14Who Commands the MachinesThe hidden philosophical roots of the lords of artificial intelligence+
  1. 14.1Introduction
  2. 14.2The Map of Power
  3. 14.3The Hidden Philosophical Roots
  4. 14.4The Four Promises of Techno-Capitalism
  5. 14.5The Contradictions No Algorithm Can Resolve
  6. 14.6The Quiet Response of the Great Traditions
  7. 14.7From Enterprise Information Systems to Planetary Systems
  8. 14.8The Invitation
15Guilt and the AlgorithmPredictive justice, the presumption of innocence and the involuntary conditioning of judgment in the age of risk scores, increasingly computed by AI+
  1. 15.1The risk score as an engineering artefact
  2. 15.2Judgment as a human act: involuntary conditioning and the architecture that safeguards it
  3. 15.3Digital prejudice: the memory that does not forget and the body that testifies
  4. 15.4The presumption of innocence as an ideal system and the rules of the algorithmic age
  5. 15.5The incalculable remainder: guilt is judged, not calculated
16The Message and the TargetData-driven target acquisition pipelines, forensic NLP and sensor fusion in contemporary conflicts+
  1. 16.1The message as engineering artefact
  2. 16.2The data-driven target acquisition pipeline
  3. 16.3The false positive as legal category
  4. 16.4Human oversight and computational acceleration
  5. 16.5The incalculable remainder

PART SIX - HEAVEN

After the city, the gaze rises. The most ambitious promises of our time - never to die, never to be alone, never to lose meaning, never to suffer - do not come from the temples: they come from the platforms. This Part takes them seriously and brings them before those who have kept for millennia the questions those promises try to answer: the three great Abrahamic faiths, listening also to the traditions of the East. It is not a chapter against technology, and it is not a sermon: it is a confrontation on equal terms between two logics - calculation, which optimises what can be counted, and the gift, which gives meaning to what cannot. The reader of every faith, and the reader of none, will find there the same question: what, in man, is not for sale and not for calculation?

17The Gift and the CalculationThe great traditions before the promises of techno-capitalism: convergences, divergences and the grammar of what cannot be bought+
  1. 17.1The five theses: calculation offering itself as salvation
  2. 17.2The Thou that is not there: artificial companionship and its brothers
  3. 17.3The three faiths at the table: the convergences, declared with honesty
  4. 17.4The irreducible divergences and the voice of the East
  5. 17.5Heaven's remainder: the grammar of the gift

PART SEVEN - THE RETURN

Every honest journey brings you home. The last Part returns to the building site: to the desk of the one who, on Monday morning, must design, coordinate and sign - and hands that person everything the book has gathered: the charter of invariants, ten verifiable rules distilled from every territory crossed, ordered under the five lenses of the method. But this Part also keeps the portrait of a craft: the responsibility that exceeds the fault, the joy of making people grow, the wound of the keeper, and the courage to go forward without fear of tomorrow. Because the best systems are those that know when to stop; and the best designers are the men who know why to start again. Then, and only then, may the Epilogue speak the last word - the one from which everything began.

18The Designer and the KeeperThe charter of invariants and the responsibility of the one who signs: the craft of designing systems and keeping people+
  1. 18.1Whoever coordinates answers: the responsibility that exceeds the fault
  2. 18.2The five lenses on the designer's desk
  3. 18.3The wound and the courage: raising people, being wounded, moving on
  4. 18.4The keeper's charter: ten invariants from the first commit
  5. 18.5The keeper's remainder
EThe Incalculable RemainderThe convergence of engineering and philosophy+

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Back to the cover · Antonio Fabbrizio · MMXXVI