George Dyson:
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
Lecture | Santa Fe Institute | Santa Fe, New Mexico | 6.11.2013
The two most powerful technologies of the 20th century – the nuclear bomb and the computer – were developed in New Mexico at the same time and by the same group of young people. But while the history of the Manhattan Project has been well told, the origin of the computer is relatively unknown. In his book Turing’s Cathedral, historian George Dyson (who grew up among these proto-hackers in Princeton, New Jersey) tells the story of how Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and a small band of other geniuses not only built the computer but foresaw the world it would create.