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May 2, 2016 54 min

Living Computers

from Big Picture Science Hosted by Big Picture Science

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

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