It’s the most dramatic technical development of recent times: Teams of people working for decades to produce a slow-motion revolution we call computing. As these devices become increasingly powerful, we recall that a pioneer from the nineteenth century – Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and Lord Byron’s daughter – said they would never surpass human ability. Was she right?
We consider the near-term future of computing as the Internet of Things is poised to link everything together, and biologists adopt the techniques of information science to program living cells.
Plus: What’s your favorite sci-fi computer?
Guests:
Walter Isaacson – President and CEO of the Aspen Institute and the author of The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Christopher Voigt – Bioengineer at MIT
Andy Ihnatko – Technology journalist
André Bormanis – Writer, screenwriter, Star Trek
John Barrett – Electronic engineer, NIMBUS Centre for Embedded Systems Research at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
First released December 7, 2014.
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Living Computers | Big Picture Science podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
