[00:04.480 --> 00:09.740]  Welcome to the 1 o'clock Technomanifesto's Visions of the Information Revolutionaries.
[00:09.800 --> 00:16.160]  All of you should probably be at the keynote now, but I'll try to be reasonably interesting and entertaining.
[00:16.520 --> 00:25.960]  I'm the co-author of Technomanifesto's Visions of the Information Revolutionaries, the book edition, which is that.
[00:27.180 --> 00:32.800]  We're Adam Bray, and she's also here, but since I didn't print out notes, I'm going to make up the speech.
[00:34.380 --> 00:41.780]  And so we have the speech now, there's the book, which is really the thing that's actually good.
[00:41.920 --> 00:54.860]  And then there's also the website, which is at technomanifestos.net, which has a lot of interesting stuff, and hopefully will be built up in the future.
[00:55.360 --> 00:57.920]  So, let me just get started, because we don't have that much time.
[00:58.620 --> 01:04.740]  So, essentially the title of this talk, and what the book is about, and very much what this speech is about, is the nature of computers.
[01:06.440 --> 01:18.100]  As it's been developed over the last kind of 50 years, essentially, over the age of computers, which in large part starts with Alan Turing's 1937.
[01:19.660 --> 01:26.340]  Actually, it's just a straight mathematical paper on computable numbers, with an application to the Einstein problem.
[01:27.080 --> 01:33.520]  And we're going to try to get all the way up to 2001 here with the future of ideas, Lawrence Lessig.
[01:33.600 --> 01:37.620]  And all of these are remarkable documents written by remarkable people.
[01:38.520 --> 01:40.040]  So, let's get started.
[01:40.700 --> 01:42.880]  Alan Turing, 1912-1954.
[01:44.200 --> 01:48.980]  In 1937, so he was a very young man, a college student.
[01:49.220 --> 01:53.940]  He wrote this document that laid out what we now call the Turing machine.
[01:53.940 --> 02:04.920]  And for the point of the speech, what I'm going to focus on is that what he did was, he saw human computers.
[02:05.180 --> 02:13.560]  That is, like back in that time, computers were people who did calculations, real calculations of figuring out square roots and stuff.
[02:13.740 --> 02:14.920]  All paper and pencil.
[02:15.800 --> 02:21.100]  And he figured out how to kind of translate that idea into what, a design for a computing machine.
[02:21.100 --> 02:24.200]  And that's now known as the Turing machine.
[02:24.940 --> 02:34.640]  And his essential realization was that the behavior of the computer, that is the human computer, at any moment is determined by the symbols which he is observing.
[02:35.080 --> 02:37.620]  And the state of mind at that moment.
[02:38.420 --> 02:45.960]  And what Turing did, is he realized that that state of mind can be replaced by a note of instructions.
[02:47.220 --> 02:49.180]  That says, what do you do?
[02:49.300 --> 02:50.800]  And what is the next note of instructions?
[02:52.520 --> 02:58.640]  And then you don't need any intelligence, essentially.
[02:58.900 --> 03:01.360]  All you just need is a program.
[03:02.000 --> 03:05.760]  And that's the initial realization of what computers are.
[03:06.380 --> 03:08.860]  And as I said, I'm moving right through.
[03:08.860 --> 03:12.100]  So now we're skipping up to 1945, as we may think.
[03:12.320 --> 03:15.820]  Vannevar Bush was one of the dominant figures in U.S.
[03:15.940 --> 03:22.060]  science all throughout the, actually both World War I and World War II.
[03:23.660 --> 03:35.340]  He, one of his greatest contributions was he basically was the person who set up the National Science Foundation post-World War II, even though he had kind of a grander vision for it.
[03:35.340 --> 03:45.860]  But his speech for the information age, it was the 1945 document, As We May Think, which was published in Atlantic Monthly.
[03:46.100 --> 03:51.720]  And in it he described how we're about to undergo this information overload.
[03:52.200 --> 03:59.080]  And he envisioned this machine called the MEMEX, which stood for kind of memory index.
[03:59.080 --> 04:14.580]  And his idea was that instead of arranging information hierarchically in file cabinets or such, what you could do is you'd have a computing device that you could pull up images, text, and such.
[04:14.820 --> 04:17.020]  And they'd all be linked together.
[04:18.300 --> 04:21.160]  The associative thought, as he said.
[04:21.300 --> 04:23.740]  And the idea is that it's based on human memory.
[04:23.740 --> 04:26.260]  The human mind operates by association.
[04:26.600 --> 04:36.300]  With one eye of it in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.
[04:36.600 --> 04:43.080]  The speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures is awe-inspiring beyond all ensignature.
[04:43.640 --> 04:48.280]  And not surprisingly, that sounds a lot like a description of the world wide web.
[04:48.640 --> 04:59.300]  And his document, as we may think, directly inspired the people who, 50, 60 years later, gave us the net.
[04:59.840 --> 05:01.300]  Well, not the net, but the web.
[05:01.540 --> 05:08.100]  And now, also at the same time, though, is when you get essentially the first real digital computers.
[05:08.100 --> 05:11.360]  Vannevar Bush was someone who was an analog computer person.
[05:11.480 --> 05:16.320]  And he believed that the future of computing was in analog computing, but it really wasn't.
[05:16.400 --> 05:17.500]  It was in the digital computer.
[05:17.820 --> 05:31.400]  And one of the greatest figures in that was John von Neumann, who is perhaps the dominant mathematician of the first half of the century, and revolutionized pretty much every single scientific field.
[05:32.560 --> 05:41.100]  But he died young from radiation cancer because he liked watching the nuclear explosions that the Manhattan Project did.
[05:42.040 --> 05:48.520]  But his realization in terms of computers was written up in the first draft of a report on the EDVAC.
[05:48.520 --> 06:05.650]  And his recognition was that, again, just as Bush modeled his idea of modeling computers after human memory, was to, in some sense, model computers after the way that the human nervous system worked, with various organs separated.
[06:06.380 --> 06:11.860]  You have your input-output organs, central processor, logical control, and a large memory.
[06:11.860 --> 06:19.180]  And that is the design of pretty much every single computer still now.
[06:19.600 --> 06:21.140]  And it's known to be found in architecture.
[06:21.820 --> 06:28.580]  And so in 1945, he laid out the plan for really what is the computer today.
[06:28.800 --> 06:33.580]  And there's been very little change except for in some advanced units.
[06:33.840 --> 06:36.420]  And because before then, it was complicated.
[06:36.580 --> 06:41.100]  They were going down, like, all these parallel processing problems, separating things.
[06:41.100 --> 06:47.540]  But his realization was you just make the processing simple, make the command simple, and then have a big memory.
[06:48.860 --> 06:50.640]  And this is what he's saying.
[06:50.740 --> 07:04.040]  Any device which is to carry out long and complicated sequences of operations, specifically of calculations, just have your computer do thousands of calculations a second, or millions or billions now, and must have a considerable memory.
[07:04.320 --> 07:05.920]  And then he describes the memory.
[07:05.980 --> 07:15.420]  And while it appeared that various parts of this memory have to perform functions which differ somewhat in their nature and considerably in their purpose, it is nevertheless tempting to treat the entire memory as one organ.
[07:15.660 --> 07:28.900]  And that's one of the biggest realizations in designing computers, was that the difference between, like, an instruction and data is a difference that we know, but a computer doesn't have to care about.
[07:28.900 --> 07:32.340]  And the essential processors or computers don't really care.
[07:32.580 --> 07:40.080]  You know, they will shift... you can put an address, you can put, you know, a number, you can add the two.
[07:40.960 --> 07:42.080]  A computer doesn't care.
[07:43.540 --> 07:52.120]  At the same time, you have your computers, but you also have the realization of what they can do and what their place is in society.
[07:52.740 --> 08:14.880]  And Norbert Wiener, a similar prodigy of the same era, and one of the most famously absent-minded professors at MIT, wrote in 1948 a book about... essentially about feedback mechanisms, and in particular about negative feedback mechanisms.
[08:15.940 --> 08:23.340]  A positive feedback loop is one in which you have an input and output, input goes in, and then the output amplifies that signal.
[08:23.520 --> 08:30.540]  And you get your feedback squeal, like if I stuck this microphone up to the speaker, that would be a positive feedback loop.
[08:31.240 --> 08:33.200]  But negative feedback loops are regulatory.
[08:33.520 --> 08:34.600]  Those are like thermostats.
[08:35.460 --> 08:39.740]  If it gets too hot, the air conditioner gets turned on.
[08:39.880 --> 08:41.400]  If it gets too cold, the heater goes on.
[08:41.760 --> 08:42.640]  It regulates.
[08:42.640 --> 08:50.360]  And what that does is it allows systems to... essentially to survive in a changing environment.
[08:50.580 --> 09:09.820]  And his recognition was that that is perhaps the real connection between living creatures, humans, society, all of which survive through regulatory feedback, and the advanced mechanical devices that were being developed, and in particular the computer.
[09:10.840 --> 09:17.660]  And the word cybernetics comes from the Greek kubernetes there, which means steersman.
[09:17.780 --> 09:20.400]  And it's also the same word that gave us governor and government.
[09:21.940 --> 09:27.420]  And that... it's that navigation is like what cybernetics is.
[09:27.540 --> 09:30.860]  The regulatory feedback is you're navigating through the path of your...
[09:31.500 --> 09:33.500]  you've got your hand on the tiller.
[09:35.600 --> 09:36.480]  And that...
[09:38.040 --> 09:42.860]  And that realization is that one of the things that goes on is that responsibility is that...
[09:42.860 --> 09:54.920]  So you have my thesis is that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback.
[09:56.800 --> 10:00.600]  And that recognition that both...
[10:01.520 --> 10:08.820]  that both humans, society, and computers are surviving by...
[10:08.820 --> 10:12.660]  through regulatory feedback really inspired a whole generation of people.
[10:13.460 --> 10:18.160]  And it's what we have, why we have so many cyberpunk and cyberspace and all those things.
[10:18.160 --> 10:20.200]  And that's really what the root idea is there.
[10:21.620 --> 10:27.940]  1950, Alan Turing comes back, writes computer and machinery intelligence, which is more commonly known just as the Turing test paper.
[10:28.100 --> 10:32.880]  And it's... it's a real fun to read because he has a very odd sense of humor.
[10:34.220 --> 10:46.180]  And the... the Turing test, as some of you may know, or all of you, is essentially... he... he started off the speech saying...
[10:46.600 --> 10:48.100]  asking the question, can machines think?
[10:48.260 --> 10:49.680]  And he says, you know what?
[10:49.780 --> 10:56.000]  That's too hard, because you have to know what is thinking, what is intelligence, and those are questions that we can argue about forever, but never really know what the answer is.
[10:56.060 --> 10:58.080]  And he said, instead of saying that, can computers think?
[10:58.300 --> 11:03.340]  You basically say, can computers act human enough that we think that they're human?
[11:03.500 --> 11:06.180]  Can... can we have a conversation with a computer, um...
[11:07.300 --> 11:09.260]  and believe that it's a real person?
[11:09.780 --> 11:16.480]  And a lot of people say, well, that's not really a definition of intelligence, and that's not what artificial intelligence is, and it's basically right.
[11:16.600 --> 11:20.300]  But on the other hand, it's something that you can actually try to achieve.
[11:21.400 --> 11:24.340]  And then his question, though, was, how do you build...
[11:25.120 --> 11:27.020]  how do you construct an intelligent machine?
[11:27.120 --> 11:44.340]  And his idea was, instead of trying to build an intelligent machine from scratch, you follow the path that people do, which is you kind of start off as a... a child, and then you are given information and feedback and training and lessons, and you become an adult.
[11:45.000 --> 11:57.100]  And Turing believed that, at the end of the century, so I guess that's now, the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machine's thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
[11:58.820 --> 12:07.760]  And it's, in some sense, it's, well, one's opinion of whether that's true or not is an interesting question.
[12:09.320 --> 12:11.420]  And then this was his idea for a child.
[12:11.580 --> 12:18.240]  This is, instead of producing... trying to produce a program to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's?
[12:19.640 --> 12:29.440]  And only today are people... I mean, people have been trying to do that for a long time, but only today, in fact, especially with, like, the, you know, the amazing computing process that we have now.
[12:29.740 --> 12:31.180]  People have been trying to do that.
[12:31.340 --> 12:38.300]  And one of the big lessons is... the big realization is that children learn a lot more than we think.
[12:39.360 --> 12:44.940]  Because what we learn in school is really only the smallest amount of what makes us intelligent.
[12:45.300 --> 12:48.940]  Most of it's just interacting with their environment and with other people.
[12:49.820 --> 12:50.240]  Okay.
[12:51.120 --> 12:53.040]  1960, man-computer symbiosis.
[12:53.220 --> 12:54.140]  Now we've got computers.
[12:54.420 --> 12:56.700]  The last ten years we're spent in actually building computers.
[12:56.900 --> 12:57.880]  We've got digital computers.
[12:57.940 --> 12:58.660]  We have the transistor.
[12:58.940 --> 13:00.700]  We have machines that work.
[13:01.560 --> 13:02.440]  And J.C.R. Licklider was a very soft-spoken but incredibly influential man because he essentially was the person who got the ARPANET going, which ended up with the Internet.
[13:14.320 --> 13:18.840]  And he had this dream of what he called the Intergalactic Network.
[13:19.220 --> 13:25.540]  And what he did is he funded... he was the first person to really do ARPA funding for computer science departments.
[13:25.740 --> 13:33.660]  And in fact, with that funding, founded... pretty much all of the first United States computer science departments were funded through him.
[13:33.660 --> 13:43.960]  And he also got the network of researchers there and forced them to work together and actually learn from each other.
[13:44.520 --> 13:53.920]  And his real belief was that computers could complement humans in the sense that humans are good at thinking fast...
[13:53.920 --> 13:58.240]  or not thinking fast, but coming up with complicated ideas... let's see, does that happen?
[13:58.380 --> 13:58.460]  No.
[13:59.220 --> 14:03.020]  Complicated... humans can come up with complicated questions, but we're sloppy and we think slow.
[14:04.040 --> 14:08.760]  Computers, they're simple, but they're fast and they, you know, they do exactly what you're told.
[14:09.680 --> 14:17.600]  And so he really believed... this is at the same time that ARPA... like, ARPA was created to fund for the space race.
[14:18.140 --> 14:21.520]  NASA came a few months later and actually ended up getting most of ARPA's budget.
[14:21.520 --> 14:28.080]  But they were the... they were space government... it was government money for the space.
[14:28.340 --> 14:34.520]  And he believed that the space frontier was considerably less interesting and important than the cerebral frontier.
[14:34.760 --> 14:41.380]  Because the thing about space is that there's a lot of it, but it doesn't... it can't be changed.
[14:41.820 --> 14:47.760]  Whereas the kind of the cerebral frontier is something that is literally without limit.
[14:49.160 --> 14:54.880]  And his hope was that in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly.
[14:55.180 --> 15:04.120]  And that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information handling machines we know today.
[15:05.860 --> 15:12.660]  And again, that's the type of thing that, to a degree, has happened in many ways has not.
[15:13.800 --> 15:19.280]  But the whole goal of interface design is really one of the things that has led to that.
[15:20.940 --> 15:34.420]  And this person right here, Doug Engelbart, is probably, I mean, and I might be overstating things, but he probably is the person who is most responsible for the modern interface, the modern way that we use computers.
[15:34.420 --> 15:38.200]  The idea of personal computers and network computers.
[15:41.080 --> 15:48.940]  Because he, in 1962, when he actually had this idea and was trying to figure out a way to put together the idea of augmenting human intellect.
[15:49.280 --> 15:56.420]  The idea that computers, the best thing that they can do is extend our own abilities and essentially make us smarter.
[15:56.420 --> 16:01.320]  Make us communicate, allow us to communicate better and think better.
[16:02.300 --> 16:06.660]  And he had kind of two central ideas, which were bootstrapping and coevolution.
[16:07.200 --> 16:10.740]  And bootstrapping is essentially the kind of idea of picking up by your bootstraps.
[16:10.740 --> 16:19.640]  The idea that, with computers especially, you can design your tools on your computer and then you use those tools to design better tools.
[16:19.640 --> 16:28.280]  Like, for example, you write a programming language and you design the next better version of the programming language in that programming language.
[16:28.480 --> 16:34.340]  And you can do that with pretty much anything with computers because the tools are just bits.
[16:35.000 --> 16:38.360]  And you can manipulate them like a kind of magic play.
[16:38.980 --> 16:45.400]  And his idea of coevolution was actually one of the things that really founded his goals of interface design.
[16:45.400 --> 16:49.620]  I mean, he was the person who essentially designed the mouse.
[16:50.980 --> 16:56.160]  And, like, well, we have a picture of what he looked like here coming up.
[16:56.340 --> 17:07.420]  And then, by augmented human intellect, we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit her particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.
[17:07.840 --> 17:10.620]  Which is, you know, what we kind of have today.
[17:11.200 --> 17:16.220]  And, we spend great sums for disciplines aimed at understanding and harnessing nuclear power.
[17:16.460 --> 17:20.400]  Why not consider developing a discipline aimed at understanding and harnessing neural power?
[17:20.560 --> 17:24.040]  In the long run, the power of the human intellect is really the more important of the two.
[17:24.300 --> 17:26.160]  And the thing is, realize that this is 1962.
[17:26.360 --> 17:30.540]  This is before... this is when there are practically no computers around.
[17:30.540 --> 17:41.420]  And these few people who... and it was incredibly difficult for people like this to convince anybody, even other scientists, that it really was worth investing and investigating computers.
[17:41.700 --> 17:43.300]  And so, this is him in 1974.
[17:43.300 --> 17:53.460]  And he had, basically, a system like this set up about seven or eight years beforehand, where they've got, you know, it's a personal computer there, basically.
[17:53.460 --> 17:56.020]  You have your mouse.
[17:56.200 --> 17:59.520]  He's got a key set, a cordial key set at the left.
[18:00.180 --> 18:06.360]  And his software... and the software had... let's see, it had, like, windows.
[18:07.060 --> 18:09.620]  There was, like, networked email.
[18:10.760 --> 18:13.000]  There... did some text and graphics.
[18:13.400 --> 18:15.520]  I mean, it was essentially a modern system.
[18:16.080 --> 18:20.580]  And what happened was, this was at the Stanford Research Institute.
[18:20.580 --> 18:27.420]  And pretty much in the 70s, all the people jumped ship to Xerox Park.
[18:27.760 --> 18:33.640]  And were more famous there in building kind of what we recognized as the personal computer.
[18:33.760 --> 18:36.860]  And then those people... then more people jumped ship to Apple and such.
[18:37.200 --> 18:40.280]  And it's a... it's a pretty direct evolutionary trail.
[18:41.080 --> 18:52.000]  At the same time as Engelbart, we have Marshall McLuhan, who's this kind of very crusty Canadian Catholic who kind of hates modern technology.
[18:52.320 --> 18:56.680]  But has a... because he hates it, he pays attention to it.
[18:56.880 --> 19:00.860]  And he wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Mating King of Typographic Man.
[19:01.180 --> 19:06.020]  And his... what this book is saying is it was a book about the history of media.
[19:06.020 --> 19:13.300]  In media, meaning like the printing press, literature, that type of thing.
[19:13.800 --> 19:16.720]  And the printing press transformed society.
[19:16.960 --> 19:24.060]  It took an oral society and changed it into one in which you had these solid books.
[19:24.200 --> 19:25.920]  It created the concept of authorship.
[19:26.360 --> 19:28.000]  The concept of copyright.
[19:28.000 --> 19:32.700]  The idea that... an idea is associated with a single person.
[19:33.020 --> 19:38.340]  Because before... and that is... can be held in a locked form and then distributed to the masses.
[19:38.960 --> 19:42.900]  That there's like public common ideas that are shared by people.
[19:43.200 --> 19:46.960]  The idea of the nation all came from the printing press.
[19:46.960 --> 19:50.220]  And the Gutenberg Galaxy runs through that.
[19:50.320 --> 19:59.440]  And then talks about how electronic media is affecting an equally profound transition.
[20:00.400 --> 20:09.880]  And what that is, is that the new electronic interdependence, like electronic global networks, recreate the world in the image of a global village.
[20:10.060 --> 20:12.200]  And you may have seen that phrase all over the place.
[20:12.320 --> 20:13.440]  And this is what it's referring to.
[20:13.440 --> 20:20.440]  It's the idea that when we have a global network, we're all... every idea...
[20:21.000 --> 20:24.260]  All our ideas are kind of instantly transmitted everywhere.
[20:24.520 --> 20:28.460]  And at the same time, all of our actions have instant global consequences.
[20:28.760 --> 20:31.880]  And he's not saying that that's a great thing.
[20:31.960 --> 20:34.080]  That the global vision is, hooray, we're all living in a village.
[20:34.560 --> 20:38.460]  This is the village that has essentially... you know, this could be a headhunter's village.
[20:38.460 --> 20:42.980]  Where, like, it's all tribal rumors and panics going at the same time.
[20:43.920 --> 20:51.460]  As well as it could be having neighbors and friends on all ends of the world.
[20:52.060 --> 20:55.800]  And then in 1964, he kind of followed that up with understanding media.
[20:55.800 --> 21:02.280]  The extent it's a man which talks... kind of continues the story of Gutenberg-Bowell galaxy.
[21:02.420 --> 21:03.980]  And he talks about the media of the present and the future.
[21:04.180 --> 21:09.060]  And probably the most famous thing that he said in there was that the medium is the message.
[21:09.380 --> 21:17.920]  Which is saying that if you want to understand content, if you want to understand an idea, you have to pay attention to how it's being told.
[21:17.920 --> 21:23.840]  And, like, for example, in some sense, this speech is the same thing that's in the book.
[21:23.920 --> 21:25.700]  And it's the same thing that's on the website.
[21:26.440 --> 21:30.420]  And it's the same thing that's in the exciting television series, which hasn't been made.
[21:30.760 --> 21:37.140]  But the... all those things... everybody will have a completely different memory of that.
[21:37.240 --> 21:39.120]  I mean, like, in theory, this is being taped.
[21:39.200 --> 21:40.420]  You watch the tape of this speech.
[21:40.640 --> 21:44.160]  Watching the tape of this speech would be entirely different than sitting here in this audience.
[21:44.160 --> 21:47.520]  And your memory and how it affects you will be completely different.
[21:48.180 --> 22:02.860]  And this understanding of... like understanding media, understanding the interface is one of the things that people forget about computers pretty much all the time is that what you... how you interact with it is perhaps the most important thing.
[22:02.860 --> 22:16.820]  And he also recognized that electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and nerves outside its hide.
[22:16.940 --> 22:23.400]  One of the reasons that people liked McLuhan in the 60s is because he wrote really strange quotes like this.
[22:24.140 --> 22:27.660]  But there's usually a real idea behind them.
[22:27.660 --> 22:38.780]  And this is kind of an interesting way of looking at the world is that we're as much trapped by... and controlled by the electronic technology as it assists us.
[22:40.060 --> 22:45.140]  It's... and all technologies kind of extend and change our senses.
[22:45.860 --> 22:51.440]  And electronic technology, electronic media changes in sense exactly the way we think.
[22:51.440 --> 22:52.340]  Yes.
[22:52.340 --> 22:58.340]  And that means that there are profound consequences in the way that we build our machines.
[22:59.700 --> 23:01.340]  1968, Licklider come back.
[23:01.580 --> 23:05.080]  Now the ARPANET is about to be built.
[23:05.560 --> 23:09.240]  And you have Engelbart's projects now.
[23:09.400 --> 23:14.140]  So, like, now these people have actually seen what the future of, you know, kind of the personal computer will be.
[23:14.140 --> 23:20.800]  And the big question is, like, who gets the advantage of all this intelligence amplification?
[23:21.740 --> 23:23.820]  And, you know, it's just asking the question.
[23:23.960 --> 23:27.400]  For society, the impact would be good or bad depending mainly on the question.
[23:27.820 --> 23:31.100]  Will to be online be a privilege or a right?
[23:31.140 --> 23:36.820]  And I have the feeling that there's more than enough panels this weekend that are talking about this issue.
[23:36.820 --> 23:39.700]  It's actually, what is it, 25 years later?
[23:39.860 --> 23:41.380]  I'm not really that good at math.
[23:43.560 --> 23:44.120]  30?
[23:44.440 --> 23:44.920]  34.
[23:45.040 --> 23:45.500]  35?
[23:49.960 --> 23:50.660]  There we go.
[23:51.660 --> 23:55.720]  And 1968, same time, we have, like, society is changing.
[23:55.980 --> 23:59.260]  And it's, like, in ways that, essentially, Marshall McLuhan was talking about.
[23:59.260 --> 24:20.560]  And, uh, Abby Hoffman, a, kind of, one of the great media activists, uh, you know, who did stuff all around the city, uh, was, like, he really, uh, drilled down the idea that with the change of electronic, uh, the change from the industrial age to the information age,
[24:20.860 --> 24:23.620]  like, our concepts of work and leisure can change.
[24:24.220 --> 24:25.400]  Work is competition.
[24:25.660 --> 24:28.980]  Work is, was linked to productivity to serve the industrial revolution.
[24:29.240 --> 24:30.660]  We must separate the two.
[24:30.900 --> 24:33.900]  We must abolish work and all the drudgery it represents.
[24:34.380 --> 24:39.100]  And, like, with physical resources, you know, those are limited.
[24:39.240 --> 24:40.140]  We have to compete for them.
[24:40.260 --> 25:01.080]  But intellectual resources, only because we construct laws and we, we, we, we attach them to, uh, kind of old world ways of thinking, do they have to be, uh, scarce in competitive resources, which is, you know, the whole conflict of whether you, uh, you know,
[25:01.960 --> 25:04.240]  can copyright control and intellectual property.
[25:05.420 --> 25:16.320]  And then in 1971, uh, he wrote Steal This Book, which expanded on his idea of the free society, uh, which is both, in, in, kind of both ways.
[25:16.320 --> 25:23.600]  It's, uh, the idea that free in that you can kind of, like, just take stuff, which is not, not necessarily the, uh, best thing.
[25:23.740 --> 25:37.380]  But it's also the idea that, um, you should have freedom to, uh, like, basically live without, uh, kind of the, the constructs of, uh, the old world thinking.
[25:37.380 --> 25:42.360]  And Steal This Book also talked about, uh, his abilities of media manipulation.
[25:42.640 --> 25:48.960]  But then also his inability, even though he was a great, he could, you know, get the press to his press conferences and stuff.
[25:49.200 --> 25:54.020]  But to actually, uh, distribute ideas, it taught, it's the control of the distribution.
[25:54.020 --> 26:01.400]  To talk about true freedom of the press, we must talk of the availability of the channels of communication that are designed to reach the entire population.
[26:01.400 --> 26:05.220]  Or at least that segment of the population that might participate in such a dialogue.
[26:05.720 --> 26:09.740]  Freedom of the press belongs to those that own the distribution system.
[26:10.320 --> 26:13.740]  And that's why, like, the internet web's a great thing.
[26:14.240 --> 26:29.820]  But, you know, the, the corporations that control the old world media are, are trying as hard as possible to, uh, move systems that, you know, start off free into, uh, controlled distribution channels.
[26:31.880 --> 26:35.000]  And speaking of that, 1974, computer lib.
[26:35.820 --> 26:42.360]  Uh, Ted Nelson, uh, an iconoclast, I guess would probably be the best way, best way of describing him.
[26:43.040 --> 26:49.480]  Uh, and he, he really believed in the idea of the, the computer for the masses.
[26:49.660 --> 26:50.840]  That everybody should have a computer.
[26:50.840 --> 27:00.720]  That computers aren't, shouldn't just be something that, like, the elite, uh, hacker computer priests, uh, get to understand and use.
[27:01.420 --> 27:06.760]  Um, and at the same time, he, he coined, uh, the word hypertext.
[27:06.980 --> 27:14.600]  Uh, and so, the first thing is imperative for many reasons that the appalling gap between the public and the computer must be closed.
[27:14.600 --> 27:20.340]  As this, and it's supposed to be the, as the saying goes, war is too important to be left to the generals.
[27:21.040 --> 27:23.220]  Um, and that's us, right here.
[27:23.740 --> 27:27.160]  Uh, guardianship of the computer can no longer be kept to the priesthood.
[27:27.760 --> 27:32.980]  Or, even more, he was referring to, like, academic and, uh, corporate elites.
[27:33.380 --> 27:41.620]  But, the idea that the, you know, the hobbyist, uh, has a real place in the future of computing was one that he was very correct.
[27:41.620 --> 27:44.700]  And, hypermedia point the way to freedom.
[27:45.660 --> 27:53.500]  Which was, yeah, like, more than, Vannevar Bush's idea for hypermedia systems was that it would allow, like, the scientist or the lawyer to be more effective.
[27:53.700 --> 28:04.220]  But, Ted Nelson really recognized it as a mechanism for, uh, uh, keeping democracy in the modern age.
[28:04.220 --> 28:11.580]  And, maybe, even if we're lucky, uh, allowing democracy to reach new and more remarkable forms.
[28:12.220 --> 28:19.380]  Uh, at the same time, Alan Kaye, who's someone who's, uh, he's a, he's a young man who's inspired by all of these people.
[28:19.580 --> 28:22.440]  And, he coined the term personal computer.
[28:22.760 --> 28:25.620]  And, not just coined the term, but had a real vision for it.
[28:25.620 --> 28:37.140]  And, uh, uh, his ideas was that if the computer is to be truly personal, adult and child users must be able to get it to perform useful activities without resorting to the services of an expert.
[28:37.220 --> 28:38.440]  I have real trouble with the word, the.
[28:39.060 --> 28:54.640]  Um, uh, in, in other words, like, another way of saying that is that simple tasks should be simple and complex tasks should be possible, which is another thing that he wrote, uh, and then was picked up later by, uh, people like Larry Wall.
[28:54.640 --> 29:05.000]  Uh, and it's, in some sense, it's, it, these ideas don't seem like that complicated, but you have to remember that, at the time, this is not what people were using computers for.
[29:05.120 --> 29:06.960]  This is not how people were designing computers.
[29:07.220 --> 29:15.280]  And, even today, you know, it's not, this is, does not exactly reflect a lot of, like, say, Microsoft's, like, design philosophy.
[29:16.440 --> 29:23.740]  Um, and then, the range of simulations, because you recognize that computers were, uh, the best way of thinking is that they are simulators.
[29:23.740 --> 29:27.420]  They, they're, they allow you to create worlds.
[29:28.020 --> 29:28.980]  Um, they're modelers.
[29:30.120 --> 29:36.020]  The great thing about computers is not that they can process numbers quickly or that they can, you can build a big database.
[29:36.320 --> 29:38.740]  It's that you can explore potentialities.
[29:39.640 --> 29:45.080]  The range of simulations the computer can perform is bounded only by the limits of the human imagination.
[29:45.080 --> 29:53.060]  Although the personal computer can be guided in any direction we choose, the real sin would be to make it act like a machine.
[29:54.100 --> 29:57.100]  And that's what most people do with computers.
[29:57.720 --> 30:06.460]  1980 of Mindstorms by Seymour Papert, who, with Marvin Minsky, was one of the, essentially the founding members of the MIT AI lab.
[30:06.460 --> 30:12.320]  Um, and he worked with Minsky, um, he, he was a, uh, kind of a child psychologist, essentially.
[30:12.600 --> 30:18.480]  And he worked with Minsky to explore how computers could help children to learn.
[30:18.660 --> 30:26.820]  And at the same time, watch children learning, and to understand how to design better and, uh, and more intelligent computers.
[30:26.820 --> 30:31.640]  To understand, like, artificial intelligence, kind of the same idea that Alan Turing was discussing.
[30:32.380 --> 30:35.500]  And Papert was the man who, uh, invented Logo.
[30:35.920 --> 30:41.780]  And you can see him there with a, a turtle, uh, looking kind of very 1970s.
[30:42.340 --> 30:46.660]  Um, and, you know, it's, again, just hammering those same ideas.
[30:46.820 --> 30:51.100]  There's a world of difference between what computers can do, and what society will choose to do with them.
[30:51.840 --> 30:54.400]  Um, because there's a great, you know...
[30:54.400 --> 31:00.520]  Um, his idea for the computers in schools, it was not rote learning and, uh, running through tests.
[31:00.660 --> 31:07.440]  It was actually, uh, letting children play and build and, and work with each other.
[31:07.880 --> 31:12.920]  Uh, computers can be carriers of powerful ideas and of the seeds of cultural change.
[31:13.360 --> 31:22.120]  They can help people form new relationships with knowledge that cut across the traditional lines that separate humanities from science and knowledge of self from both of these.
[31:22.120 --> 31:44.080]  And this idea that computers can actually break down barriers between technology, uh, science and arts, between, like, what we, the, the traditional boundaries is the same recognition that Abby Hoffman was talking about, that Marshall McLuhan, the idea that the industrial revolution allowed us to live in a modern society,
[31:44.080 --> 31:50.500]  but the sacrifice that we made was that we compartmentalized our lives, like, our jobs.
[31:51.220 --> 32:12.580]  Like, we compartmentalized everything, we specialized, and we separated all these things into boxes, because we can shift boxes around with machines, but computers, in theory, could actually let us, uh, still maintain a modern structure without having to separate ourselves from who we are.
[32:13.860 --> 32:15.220]  1985, Society of Mind.
[32:15.320 --> 32:19.900]  This is Papert's, uh, partner in crime for, uh, the 60s and 70s.
[32:20.280 --> 32:22.620]  And he was exploring the idea of artificial intelligence.
[32:23.120 --> 32:29.340]  Uh, one of the, a lot of robotics, artificial intelligence, and, like, his idea of artificial intelligence with complex interaction of agents.
[32:29.420 --> 32:36.720]  There's a lot here, but I'm going to kind of, kind of skim over Minsky, and just say, just, this one quote from Society of Mind, which is a remarkable book.
[32:37.020 --> 32:38.940]  Uh, what magical trick makes us intelligent?
[32:39.140 --> 32:40.340]  The trick is that there is no trick.
[32:40.600 --> 32:45.180]  The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single perfect principle.
[32:45.740 --> 32:55.680]  His, the idea is, is that, you know, that the, in the title of the, the title of the book, Society of Mind, is that our intelligence comes from the interaction of thousands of mindless agents.
[32:55.680 --> 32:58.880]  Uh, which, you know, so you got your neurons and stuff.
[32:59.080 --> 33:01.700]  And, but he actually explored, kind of, how that would actually work.
[33:01.860 --> 33:12.580]  But this idea of complexity, uh, a beautiful complexity arising out of the simple interactions of things was one of the basic ideas, uh, that Norbert Wiener really was, uh, hammering in cybernetics.
[33:12.840 --> 33:19.180]  And is one of the big popular things, like, with, say, like, Steven Wolfram's New Kind of Science.
[33:19.180 --> 33:23.300]  All these ideas of cellular automata, which was something that John von Neumann worked on.
[33:23.300 --> 33:27.600]  Um, is one of the big ideas of today.
[33:29.180 --> 33:30.820]  1985, GNU Manifesto.
[33:31.360 --> 33:31.960]  That's right.
[33:32.140 --> 33:34.480]  We've, uh, we've hit the age of the personal computing.
[33:34.740 --> 33:35.920]  Uh, there's Stallman there.
[33:36.120 --> 33:41.560]  He was working while Papert and Minsky were down, like, on the fifth floor of, uh, the AI lab building.
[33:41.740 --> 33:44.580]  Uh, he was up on the top floor, uh, as a hacker there.
[33:44.580 --> 33:59.200]  And, uh, in 85 after the, essentially the AI lab lost its culture, uh, essentially to, uh, the world of, uh, you know, you could actually make money in computers.
[33:59.200 --> 34:01.140]  And so everybody left and did that.
[34:01.740 --> 34:03.700]  Uh, I mean, it's a more complicated story.
[34:03.900 --> 34:15.320]  But, like, uh, he didn't want to give up, uh, his kind of ideal life that he had, where he could just play and share, uh, with computers.
[34:15.320 --> 34:16.080]  We're just a little.
[34:16.180 --> 34:23.680]  And he's founded the Free Software Movement, which is, at the same time, a technological, moral, and political movement.
[34:24.520 --> 34:37.700]  Um, and, uh, but the great genius that he wasn't just starting the movement, it was, it really was, and in the GNU Manifesto ruling, laying force to the principle that the fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of programs.
[34:38.040 --> 34:43.140]  Marketing arrangements now typically used essentially forbid programmers to treat others as friends.
[34:43.140 --> 34:55.660]  So he wrote this document and laid down, kind of laid down the law on what it means to, you know, be a programmer, to, you know, and, like, for what the, the society that he wanted to live in was.
[34:55.860 --> 35:10.220]  But his great work was doing, really was writing the GNU Public License, which essentially hacked copyright by using, uh, a system which was, is designed to control, uh, access to knowledge and ideas.
[35:10.220 --> 35:16.720]  And figure out what he, to use that control to essentially force it to be spread and shared.
[35:18.040 --> 35:23.800]  Um, and that's, right there, that, there's like, you know, 50 speeches right there.
[35:24.340 --> 35:29.080]  Uh, but, 1986, Engine of Creation, this is a Marvin Minsky disciple, uh, K.R. Drexler, he's the man who essentially started the field of nanotechnology, um, and really tried to deal with consequences.
[35:36.880 --> 35:47.900]  And, uh, the idea of nanotechnology is that you have, uh, small, uh, nano-sized, uh, like, microsoftic, uh, molecule-sized machines.
[35:48.400 --> 35:53.900]  And, once you have that, uh, you can do pretty much anything, is kind of the idea.
[35:54.060 --> 36:01.580]  Assemblers will be able to make virtually anything from common materials without labor, replacing smoking factories with systems as clean as forest.
[36:01.580 --> 36:06.680]  They will transform technology and economy at their roots, opening a new world of possibilities.
[36:07.620 --> 36:15.240]  And, the Engine of Creation, uh, discusses all these possibilities, both the kind of great and dangerous, and talks about, like, the responsibility.
[36:15.240 --> 36:30.640]  And the question is, is how, if we're, if technology is gonna proceed in a way that's gonna transform our world, uh, like, in every way, both, uh, social and physical, how can we keep up?
[36:31.320 --> 36:36.520]  And we cannot do much to slow the growth of technology, but we can speed the growth of foresight.
[36:36.740 --> 36:41.340]  And with better foresight, we will have a better chance to steer the technology race in safe directions.
[36:41.340 --> 36:51.040]  And he believed that that way, he really believed, uh, in Ted Nelson's message, and Engelbart's message, that the way that we can do that is by better, uh, communication systems.
[36:51.140 --> 36:59.180]  He was a, like, this is 1986, and he really believed in the idea of hypertext systems, uh, that would allow us to understand.
[36:59.180 --> 37:14.140]  And so, the, this foment is leading up to the web, which was essentially invented in 1989, uh, by Tim Berners-Lee, uh, with his paper, Information Management Proposal.
[37:14.140 --> 37:21.460]  He originally was gonna call it, uh, something that the acronym would be Tim-Moi, in other words, Tim-Me.
[37:21.760 --> 37:27.460]  But, he thought that was gonna be a little too egocentric, so he gave it a less interesting title.
[37:28.360 --> 37:30.480]  Um, and, like, it's pretty simple.
[37:30.780 --> 37:37.340]  It talks about, you've got your data overload, he's working at CERN, he's talking about there's all these, all these different forms of media, nobody's really communicating.
[37:37.340 --> 37:41.420]  Why don't we just build a, a, a simple, straightforward hypertext system.
[37:41.820 --> 37:45.200]  And, here, we're just gonna zoom for, here's the internet here.
[37:46.640 --> 37:50.560]  1969, 4, boom, boom, boom, 1973, bigger.
[37:50.980 --> 37:56.860]  1987, this is, so this is what you're dealing with now, is you're dealing with all these different networks all hooked up together.
[37:57.500 --> 38:02.560]  Um, it's a great thing, but, you know, what to do with it.
[38:02.560 --> 38:11.720]  And so, here's the worldwide web proposal, which, you know, he drew it on a Mac, so, and he used, uh, he used Gnu software.
[38:12.200 --> 38:17.100]  He used, uh, some of this, like, he used all the stuff that came beforehand, all the ideas.
[38:17.340 --> 38:25.580]  And, and just said, okay, well, you know, we'll just, let's hack together, uh, a hypertext system and give it away for free, and make sure that everybody can use it.
[38:25.700 --> 38:27.680]  And it's, it's not fancy.
[38:27.680 --> 38:36.300]  Like, Ted Nelson had a, a glorious vision for a, a beautiful and complex hypertext system, uh, that was beautiful and complex.
[38:36.520 --> 38:43.620]  Like, he, he compared, I think it was, he compared, like, Xanadu, his system to, like, the Queen Mary and, uh, the world wide web is like algae.
[38:44.140 --> 38:46.420]  But the thing is, is that algae is everywhere.
[38:47.960 --> 38:49.660]  And there's only, like, one Queen Mary.
[38:51.200 --> 38:54.380]  And, like, they get, when they hit icebergs, they sink.
[38:55.600 --> 38:59.000]  So, this is what Tim Berners-Lee said about information management.
[38:59.200 --> 39:08.960]  We should work toward a universal linked information system in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphic techniques and complex extra facilities.
[39:09.240 --> 39:16.400]  The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important and a way of finding it afterwards.
[39:16.860 --> 39:23.720]  And so, he, you know, he, he knew what he was talking about because that's kind of, the, the, both the good and the bad of the web is right there.
[39:24.860 --> 39:35.060]  Um, and then, 1999, he wrote Weaving the Web, which kind of looked back at what had happened in the last ten years, uh, going from the idea to what we have now.
[39:35.060 --> 39:44.820]  And this is one of the, kind of, his big central ideas is that whether inspired by free market desires or humanistic ideals, we all felt control was the wrong perspective.
[39:45.240 --> 39:47.500]  The web's being out of control was very important.
[39:48.040 --> 39:50.040]  And, like, you know, amen to that.
[39:53.020 --> 39:53.660]  Programming Pearl.
[39:53.880 --> 39:58.460]  Larry Wall, his great contribution, he's the person who, uh, invented the programming, like, Pearl.
[39:58.460 --> 40:06.600]  But his great, uh, the, the real great contribution there is that it's a, it was a different way of looking at, uh, uh, the idea of a programming language.
[40:06.780 --> 40:09.860]  And he, he was, uh, uh, had been studied as a linguist.
[40:10.000 --> 40:14.520]  And his idea was, let's design a language that's actually, like, kind of works the same way that human languages work.
[40:14.720 --> 40:17.700]  That it's messy, um, there's lots of ways to do anything.
[40:17.980 --> 40:20.920]  There's no real, there's no perfect way of doing anything.
[40:21.120 --> 40:22.660]  There's more than one way to do it.
[40:24.000 --> 40:35.380]  Um, and then the thing, but the other recognition is that human languages come out and build and, like, are part of a culture.
[40:35.800 --> 40:39.220]  And he deliberately established a culture.
[40:39.360 --> 40:41.560]  He, like, was like, you know what, I want this language to be popular.
[40:41.700 --> 40:45.540]  I'm actually going to, like, come up with cute little catchphrases.
[40:45.600 --> 40:49.340]  I'm going to make this a cute and funny and popular thing.
[40:49.340 --> 40:53.820]  Um, and, and with the exact same idea that Tim Berners-Lee had.
[40:53.960 --> 40:56.460]  If there's a germ of an important idea in pro-culture, it's this.
[40:56.620 --> 41:00.300]  That too much control is just as deadly as too little control.
[41:00.560 --> 41:03.040]  We need control and we need chaos.
[41:04.440 --> 41:09.660]  And speaking of that, we have, uh, 1997's, uh, Eric S.
[41:09.780 --> 41:16.740]  Raymond's Cathedral in the Bazaar, which perhaps most famously was the document which convinced Netscape to, uh, open, go open source with its browser.
[41:16.740 --> 41:19.820]  Which has finally actually gotten to be really nice.
[41:20.420 --> 41:25.200]  Um, and, like, you kind of codified open source in corporate terms.
[41:25.460 --> 41:29.560]  But, the, what the cathedral in the Bazaar talked about was that you had your cathedral.
[41:29.880 --> 41:33.360]  Which was the dominant way of creating software.
[41:33.540 --> 41:38.560]  Which was that you had, uh, either, uh, kind of a proprietary closed business.
[41:38.560 --> 41:41.060]  Or, also, kind of, you had your hacker priest.
[41:41.520 --> 41:47.100]  Like, the cathedral does not just mean, uh, commercial, uh, proprietary things.
[41:47.260 --> 41:54.000]  It's also referring to, uh, like, uh, open source, uh, systems.
[41:54.060 --> 41:58.040]  In which you have, like, about, you know, five or ten people who do all the work.
[41:58.220 --> 42:02.080]  And then kind of, uh, open the doors and let people see their beautiful software.
[42:02.080 --> 42:04.720]  Whereas Linux was a bazaar.
[42:04.920 --> 42:11.220]  It was freewheeling, uh, like, you know, ended up having, like, tens, hundreds, you know.
[42:11.340 --> 42:18.820]  And now we have, like, a thousand contributors to the, uh, to the, kind of, the whole, all, to the trunk.
[42:19.340 --> 42:22.840]  Um, and that was, like, the really, kind of, the amazing thing there.
[42:22.840 --> 42:32.620]  And is that, it may be that one of the most important effects of open source success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.
[42:33.100 --> 42:39.500]  And this is, that's the exact same idea that, uh, Abby Hoffman was, uh, harping about, uh, on the streets of New York.
[42:39.940 --> 42:41.700]  Uh, you know, in the 60s.
[42:41.900 --> 42:50.820]  And it's a, kind of, a funny thing that, uh, with computers, the, kind of, the radical 60s, in some sense, actually may come to fruition.
[42:51.320 --> 42:56.940]  Uh, and here we go to where we're gonna end here, which is with the Future Ideas, which is, you know, a great title.
[42:57.580 --> 43:03.160]  And, uh, Lawrence Lessig, uh, a lawyer, a, uh, a constitutional scholar.
[43:03.380 --> 43:07.780]  Uh, you know, he clerked, uh, under Scalia in, uh, the Supreme Court.
[43:08.040 --> 43:11.280]  And essentially a superstar, uh, law kid.
[43:11.500 --> 43:18.800]  And he, with the Microsoft trial, he, um, essentially became interested in, uh, the world of computers.
[43:18.800 --> 43:24.140]  And has studied it, and basically got very depressed about what's happening.
[43:24.380 --> 43:31.080]  Um, because he's like, look, it's, we, we, we're making, we're making choices that's gonna affect us for generations.
[43:31.120 --> 43:35.340]  Like, the, whether we have, uh, essentially a democratic society or not.
[43:36.060 --> 43:38.500]  Um, and we're making all the wrong choices.
[43:39.540 --> 43:44.300]  And he just says, and this is kind of the central idea of Future Ideas, which is a remarkable book.
[43:44.380 --> 43:48.200]  His first book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, is also a very good book.
[43:48.600 --> 43:51.100]  Um, but this is, it's, it's great stuff.
[43:51.220 --> 43:54.660]  And it says, free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity.
[43:55.060 --> 43:57.540]  Without them, creativity is crippled.
[43:57.540 --> 44:06.880]  Especially in the digital age, the central question becomes not whether government or the market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled at all.
[44:07.120 --> 44:10.340]  And I guess that's where this talk ends.
[44:10.780 --> 44:15.020]  And if you have any questions or comments, uh, we'd love to discuss them.
[44:15.400 --> 44:15.660]  Thanks.
[44:20.730 --> 44:24.670]  Oh, we've got, oh, we've got one, we have like, I think two minutes.
[44:25.730 --> 44:31.370]  So, you can either raise your hand and come up to the mic, or, uh, sit, I suppose.
[44:54.900 --> 44:56.340]  Hold on, I think it's time to turn around.
[44:57.500 --> 45:05.060]  I found it interesting when you quoted the person who, uh, said that, you know, the child's mind was better to assimilate than it could grow into the adult mind.
[45:05.240 --> 45:05.360]  Right.
[45:05.560 --> 45:09.380]  I think now with stem cell research, wouldn't it be cool if you could just simulate just a stem cell?
[45:09.380 --> 45:11.260]  And then have that grow into a child's mind.
[45:11.500 --> 45:19.780]  Well, I mean, the idea of like, you know, the whole idea of neural networks as like an avenue for artificial intelligence is one of those early ones, and it's kind of over the place.
[45:20.020 --> 45:25.360]  But, you know, like, it's kind of like going from physics to chemistry in theory, you know, or physics to biology.
[45:25.660 --> 45:30.740]  Like, in theory, all you have to know to understand a human mind is like, you know, in the laws of physics.
[45:31.140 --> 45:38.920]  Um, but it's so far removed that like, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's one of those things.
[45:39.040 --> 45:46.780]  People try it, and it would be, and I wouldn't be surprised if people are actually going to try to like, grow physical forms, physical brains, and see what happens.
[45:46.920 --> 45:59.200]  But, you know, one of the nice things about computers is that you can, you know, do your imaginary thing, and you can run through like, you know, 50,000 generations of an idea, uh, except that when you're talking about like, a brain with many trillions of cells,
[45:59.360 --> 46:02.540]  like that's, it ends up being an amazing amount of computing power.
[46:02.680 --> 46:16.620]  But, part of the idea of like, nanotechnology, for example, is that the, the line between what we consider computing, and what we consider, uh, like, say, physical, like, biology, or like, those things will get blurred.
[46:16.620 --> 46:27.800]  Like, when you design a, you know, when you design software, you can, you know, have it come out as DNA, in theory, or go, slip in between the two.
[46:28.340 --> 46:31.480]  Um, and so that's one of those interesting things that will be happening.
[46:31.820 --> 46:31.940]  Yeah?
[46:32.400 --> 46:38.060]  So then, uh, that would also, because it can lead to an ecological view of computing.
[46:38.400 --> 46:53.980]  Right now, except for some sociological aspects, we don't think of computing as having an ecology, but going with, uh, the direction you were talking about in nanotechnology, we can start to see, uh, a new, a new insight coming out.
[46:54.540 --> 46:57.740]  The ecology of programs, computing, et cetera.
[46:58.340 --> 47:11.900]  Yeah, he's talking about the, uh, the ecology of computing, the idea that, like, when computers, uh, kind of become essentially pervasive, that you can actually, you, it'll, it'll, it'll almost become a biological science.
[47:14.480 --> 47:30.440]  Yeah, I mean, and, yeah, it's, I mean, one thing that we're finding is, is that, like, these traditional sciences, like, uh, you know, biology and chemistry, physics, that are traditionally, like, very distinct, like, I mean, like, in some sense biology is where it's at,
[47:30.620 --> 47:31.300]  these days.
[47:31.620 --> 47:36.100]  Like, uh, because biology is, you know, becoming a real science in some sense now.
[47:37.100 --> 47:40.200]  I mean, some people might argue that it's been a real science for a while, but, you know.
[47:43.220 --> 47:46.520]  I think it's, we should probably, uh, yeah, call it, we got the red card.
[47:46.720 --> 47:47.540]  So, this is it.
[47:47.620 --> 47:48.160]  Thank you very much.