George Dyson | Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
Recorded 3/13/2012
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In the 1940s and 1950s, a group of brilliant engineers led by John von Neumann gathered in Princeton, New Jersey with the joint goal of realizing Alan Turing's theoretical universal machine—a thought experiment that scientists use to understand the limits of mechanical computation. As a result of their fervent work, the crucial advancements that dominated 20^th century technology emerged. In Turing's Cathedral, technology historian George Dyson recreates the scenes of focused experimentation, mathematical insight, and creative genius that broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—giving us computers, digital television, modern genetics, and models of stellar evolution. Also a philosopher of science, Dyson's previous books include Baidarka, Darwin Among the Machines, and Project Orion.