The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. We are about to study the idea of a computational process . Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data . The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program .
People create programs to direct processes.
In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells. A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real.