Hypercomputation

Book excerpt: This book provides a thorough description of hypercomputation. It covers all attempts at devising conceptual hypermachines and all new promising computational paradigms that may eventually lead to the construction of a hypermachine. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of what computability is, and why the Church-Turing thesis poses an arbitrary limit to what can be actually computed. Hypercomputing is a relatively novel idea. However, the book’s most important features are its description of the various attempts of hypercomputation, from trial-and-error machines to the exploration of the human mind, if we treat it as a computing device.