Sunday, December 8, 2013

Homotopy type theory on Images des mathématiques

This post will be a short advertisement to a longer general audience text about homotopy type theory that I published on the website Images des mathématiques.

In this text, I try to convey my excitement at the reading of the book published by the participants of last year's IAS program, under direction of Steve Awoodey, Thierry Coquand and Vladimir Voevodsky.  As I write there (this is the title of this article), this remarkable work is at the crossroads of foundations of mathematics, topology and computer science. Indeed, the new foundational setup for mathematics provided by type theory may not only replace set theory; it is also at the heart of the systems for computer proof checking, and gave birth to a new kind of ``synthetic homotopy theory'' which is totally freed of the general topology framework.

Also remarkable is the way this book was produced: written collaboratively, using technology well known in open source software's development, then published under a Creative commons's license, and printed on demand.

This is not the only general audience paper on this subject, probably not the last one neither. Here are links to those I know of:
Once more, here is the link towards my article on Images des mathématiques and that towards the HoTT Book!