Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson – review

This study of cold war academic John von Neumann and his early computer is engrossing and well-researchedThe foundation myth of the internet invariably involves an iconoclastic and romantic technology entrepreneur, who, free from government restraint, enlists free-floating venture capitalists in building the Next Great Thing. It's a myth that borders on delusion, for some of the key technologies that led to the internet were underwritten by government subsidies and arose in the context of larger-than-life geopolitical battles.Thus, cryptography, which powers much of today's electronic commerce, advanced in the background of the second world war, while packet switching – a cold war-era technology that made the internet possible – was to guarantee resilient communications in the event of a nuclear attack. More recently, 9/11 and the wars it unleashed have magically transported biometric technologies such as automated facial recognition from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq into our offices and...

Read the whole article on The Guardian - Science

More from The Guardian - Science

Related