Most people, if they think about the topic at all, probably imagine computer science involves the programming of computers. But what are computers? In most cases, these are just machines of one form or another. And what is programming? Well, it is the issuing of instructions (“commands” in the programming jargon) for the machine to do something or other, or to achieve some state or other. Thus, I view Computer Science as nothing more or less than the science of delegation.
When delegating a task to another person, we are likely to be more effective (as the delegator or commander) the more we know about the skills and capabilities and curent commitments and attitudes of that person (the delegatee or commandee). So too with delegating to machines. Accordingly, a large part of theoretical computer science is concerned with exploring the properties of machines, or rather, the deductive properties of mathematical models of machines. Other parts of the discipline concern the properties of languages for commanding machines, including their meaning (their semantics) – this is programming language theory. Because the vast majority of lines of program code nowadays are written by teams of programmers, not individuals, then much of computer science – part of the branch known as software engineering – is concerned with how to best organize and manage and evaluate the work of teams of people. Because most machines are controlled by humans and act in concert for or with or to humans, then another, related branch of this science of delegation deals with the study of human-machine interactions. In both these branches, computer science reveals itself to have a side which connects directly with the human and social sciences, something not true of the other sciences often grouped with Computer Science: pure mathematics, physics, or chemistry.
And from its modern beginnings 70 years ago, computer science has been concerned with trying to automate whatever can be automated – in other words, with delegating the task of delegating. This is the branch known as Artificial Intelligence. We have intelligent machines which can command other machines, and manage and control them in the same way that humans could. But not all bilateral relationships between machines are those of commander-and-subordinate. More often, in distributed networks machines are peers of one another, intelligent and autonomous (to varying degrees). Thus, commanding is useless – persuasion is what is needed for one intelligent machine to ensure that another machine does what the first desires. And so, as one would expect in a science of delegation, computational argumentation arises as an important area of study.