Working it out with the algobots
Last week鈥檚 Monitor Weekly introduced me to a nifty mouthful of a technical term, as well as a great new portmanteau word.
Harry Bruinius鈥檚 story on high-frequency trading in the financial markets, 鈥淚s a high-tech Wall Street fair?,鈥� reported on a 鈥渄izzying Digital Age landscape of algorithmic robot traders,鈥� or 鈥渁lgobots鈥� for short.
The article gave me an impetus to look up 鈥� finally 鈥� just what an algorithm is and to do a little digging around the etymological roots of these bots.
defines algorithm 鈥渂roadly鈥� as 鈥渁 step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer.鈥�
provides a very familiar example: 鈥渢he process that Google uses in its search engine to ensure high quality informational results when the user enters search terms.鈥�
But algorithm goes way back, to a time when computers were mathematicians scribbling calculations out by hand.
It鈥檚 one of those terms that came to us from Arabic, a reminder of the period when Islamic civilization led the world in science, mathematics, and medicine. (The initial 鈥渁l鈥� is a tip-off.) Algorithm came into English in the 1690s from a medieval Latin algorismus, which the calls a 鈥渕angled transliteration鈥� from Arabic of 鈥渁l-Khwarizmi.鈥�
This was the surname of Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the 9th-century Baghdad mathematician who 鈥渋nvented鈥� algebra. He used the term al jebr, an Arabic term meaning 鈥渞eunion of broken parts,鈥� in the title of a famous treatise he wrote on equations. The mathematician used al jebr to refer to his computations; but curiously, the first use of algebra in English, in the 15th century, referred to bone-setting. It was a usage probably borrowed from Arab medical men in Spain, the etymology dictionary suggests.
But I digress. What about robots? Common words can rarely be assigned a specific date of entry into the language, but robot is a 20th-century coinage on whose origin dictionaries are in wide agreement. The popped into English in 1923, from the English translation of a play by Czech playwright Karel Capek, 鈥淩.U.R.鈥� (鈥淩ossum鈥檚 Universal Robots鈥�). The playwright credited his brother Josef with coining the term, from the Czech robotnik, meaning 鈥渟lave.鈥�
鈥淩.U.R.鈥� was about a factory that makes 鈥渁rtificial people ... out of synthetic organic matter,鈥� according to . These robots, though, were not electromechanical devices but rather 鈥渃loser to the modern idea of or even , as they may be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves.鈥� The new word robot displaced older words, such as automaton, which goes back to 1610, or even android.
Android, by the way, while not as ancient as algebra, is much older than your smart phone: It goes back to 1842 as a word meaning 鈥渁n automaton resembling a human being.鈥� Marked 鈥渞are鈥� in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, it has enjoyed a resurgence since the early 1950s, however.
Bot is another term with a history curiously longer than you might expect. The Online Etymology Dictionary pins it, as a short form of robot, to the year 2000, but adds, 鈥淚ts modern use has curious affinities with earlier uses, such as a sense of 鈥榩arasitical worm or maggot,鈥� 鈥� going back to the 1520s.
High-frequency trading may be the hottest new thing on Wall Street. But the bots that make it happen have roots that go way back.
