BELATED COMMENT to: `What is Informatics?' (2007)

Authors

  • Stefan Gruner Department of Computer Science University of Pretoria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18489/sacj.v0i57.342

Keywords:

Informatics, Heinz Zemanek, Abstract Objects

Abstract

When I wrote my above-mentioned letter to the editor of SACJ several years ago (2007), I had not been aware of the fact that the Austrian computer pioneer Heinz Zemanek (1920-2014) had published an article of the same title already in the year 1972 in the Management Informatics journal. In that publication, Zemanek had characterised informatics as a new type of an engineering discipline - i.e.: the informatician emerges as new type of engineer for abstract objects (instead of material devices). His notion of 'abstract object' Zemanek had defined already four years earlier in the journal Elektronische Rechenanlagen (1968): abstract objects can generally represent both the structure of linguistic expressions as well as the various sub-states of finite automata. Zemanek reconfirmed his point of view in the Nachrichtentechnische Zeitschrift (1973), in which he stated with regard to the goals and purposes of informatics: "man braucht dazu Ingenieure neuer Art: sie hantieren mit abstrakten Objekten, wie sie bisher nur in der Mathematik vorkamen". Though further definitions of the term 'informatics' have been numerous since then, Zemanek's early definition continues to possess (i.m.h.o.) a true core, and is also by-and-large compatible with the opinion which I had expressed previously about this topic in this journal.

Downloads

Published

2015-12-10

Issue

No. 57 (2015)

Section

Letters to the Editor

License

Copyright of all work published here subsists in the authors. While SACJ retains right of first publication, subsequent re-publication is expressly permitted provided the original SACJ publication is acknowledged and cited, according to the terms detailed below. If plagiarism is detected during review, a paper may be summarily rejected and will not be accepted unless even minor infringements are corrected. Should plagiarism be detected after a paper is published, the Editor reserves the right to withdraw a paper from publication. We expect authors to be honest in representing work as their own, and to respect the time and effort our reviewers put in without an undue burden of policing plagiarism, and hence take violations seriously. SACJ applies the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all papers published in this journal. Authors who publish with SACJ agree to the following:
  1. Authors retain copyright and grant SACJ right of first publication. The work is additionally licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License that requires others who share the work to acknowledge the work’s authorship and initial publication in SACJ. Should anyone else wish to make commercial use of the work, SACJ cedes the right to the author to negotiate terms and does not expect to be paid any royalties.
  2. Authors may enter into additional arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the SACJ-published version of the work (e.g., post it to a repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are required to refrain from posting their work online prior to completion of reviews so as not to compromise double-blind reviewing or confuse plagiarism checks.