George Dyson spent three winters, starting at age 19, in a treehouse 95 feet up in a Douglas fir on the shores of Burrard Inlet in British Columbia, before settling down to become ...read more
George Dyson spent three winters, starting at age 19, in a treehouse 95 feet up in a Douglas fir on the shores of Burrard Inlet in British Columbia, before settling down to become a historian of technology who has divided his time between building boats and writing books. His subjects have included the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986), the evolution of artificial intelligence (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997), and a path not taken into space (Project Orion, 2002). His recent Turing’s Cathedral (2012) illuminates the transition from numbers that mean things to numbers that do things in the aftermath of World War II. His current project, Analogia, opens with the campaign against the Chiricahua Apache in the 19th century and closes with the superseding of the digital revolution by something else.
