"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It [cannot] anticipat[e] any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with."

— Ada Lovelace, 1843

https://archive.org/details/adaenchantressof00tool/page/n191/mode/2up

and if you wonder why you didn't know she called it?

https://olivia.science/cryptogyny

Cryptogyny

On the systematic obfuscation of women's contributions.

https://olivia.science
@olivia what's striking about this characterization: "in making available what we are already acquainted with", my pov in type theory disposes me to consider that just this capacity to "make available", while not identical to, has a nontrivial relationship to the nature of what we think of as truth or mathematical structure. i find her formulation apt because she does not foreclose this, but also bc she insists that in the achievement of any result we only encounter ourselves, and she is right