Towards Empirical Computer Science

Part I presents a model of interactive computation and a metric for expressiveness, Part II relates interactive models of computation to physics, and Part in considers empirical models from a philosophical perspective. Interaction machines, which extend Turing Machines to interaction, are shown in Part I to be more expressive than Turing Machines by a direct proof, by adapting Godel's incompleteness result, and by observability metrics. Observation equivalence provides a tool for measuring expressiveness according to which interactive systems are more expressive than algorithms. Refinement of function equivalence by observation of outer interactive behavior and inner computation steps is examined. The change of focus from algorithms specified by computable functions to interaction specified by observation equivalence captures the essence of empirical computer science.