This paper will be of interest to those in the computing community who have a penchant for the “philosophical” aspects of machine computation. The author sets out to illuminate a field where the goal is to establish a general theory which will indicate the ultimate limits to computation. This theory should be viewed in much the same light as, for example, the 19th century theory of thermodynamics or Claude Shannon’s channel capacity theory--general theories which do not depend on the actual devices used to implement a process.

The paper provides an overview of this field and is, as the author says, an extended annotated bibliography. The bibliography is comprehensive and as such this paper will be valuable to anyone interested in the subject.

In the copy I have, there is a mistake on the second page (p. 162) where a minus sign has been omitted from the index of the decimal exponent, i.e., the heat dissipated should read “about 3 × 10 exp (−21)” and not “exp (21)” as printed.