the chinese government itself would take care to avoid purchasing power of its software. what can be done to convey the importance of this issue of china and russia that pose a problem? >> that is -- if china actually does that, which we will wait and see if they do, that will be a good first step because if you are imposing the that efik on of the people who are in charge with enforcing the laws in china, then they might have a greater appreciation for the rampant amount of piracy that's taking place in china. far worse than i would say any other country in the world. recently the ceo of microsoft came and talked to me and a few others and said comparing china to russia which has a bad reputation itself, they believe the rate -- china is more populous country than russia, but the rate of internet theft based upon a number of computers

in china is six times as great as china and russia and that worldwide, the piracy that is taking place is costing 40 to 60,000 american jobs. this from a company that has i think about 88,000 jobs total in the united states. so if they could almost double certainly increase by 50 per cent, that one company employment by handling this problem and will never completely invalid, but getting a better handle on it will create a lot of american jobs. >> finally, congressman goodlatte, ned neutrality. the energy and commerce committee is holding hearings on the issue of net neutrality, the fcc is a reactive on this. what is your view of the government role in net neutrality? >> i think that the judiciary committee has a very important role. in fact i am a former congressman rick boucher who were the cultures of the congressional caucus. i still in the culture.

we introduced legislation almost a decade ago. we didn't cut net neutrality, we called it open access there was exactly the same thing, assuring that people getting access to the internet, doing business on the internet have the opportunity to fairly compete and that the people who control that access, primarily the internet service providers do so in a fair way. that is the essence of antitrust law, and my concern about the fcc has done is to fold. first of all, i do not believe that they have the legislative authority, the existing authority under the law to be essentially view the internet from a common carrier status point of view and stepped in to regulate in this area. but second the coming and more important, for many of my friends who, as i do, believe in open access and support this regulatory approach with the fcc

is doing with net neutrality, ic to then be careful what you ask for, because this is a massive new intrusion that could lead to far greater tentacles of regulation of the internet than currently exists. one of the most dynamic things about the internet, one of the most of all things about what has grown has been its lack of regulation, its lack of excessive taxation and that freedom has caused the internet to become the dominant force in people's lives and the dominant force in the growth of our economy, and we don't want to lose that by turning over to a bureaucracy, a regulatory process. antitrust law the as i said at the outset relate to enforcing the law leaves the door on the books to make sure things are fair. we will get this from the standpoint of the need to tweak every antitrust laws to adapt to new situations? to the need to make sure over antitrust system is accessible to smaller businesses and individuals because it can be

very expensive to go through that process. but that kind of throw the book gets the bad guy approach as opposed to the government writing massive pools of the road for the internet that the fcc wants to undertake is in my opinion a better way to ensure open access. >> representative bob goodlatte is chairman of the subcommittee on intellectual property on the internet as well as the co-chairman of the congressional internet caucus. gautham nagesh from "the hill" newspaper. thank you both for being on "the communicators." >> thank you, peter. from the tenth annual national book festival on the national mall in washington, d.c., biographer richard holmes presents his book the age of wonder how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and the terror of science. the book was the winner of the 2009 national book critics circle award for general nonfiction. this is about three minutes. >> it is a great pleasure to be

here. i just flown in from london. why i'm the only man in the tent wearing a suit. [laughter] i probably will take it off later on. i am tremendously grateful to the two major institutions, of course the library of congress, which i want to say something about, and also the "washington post," which want to say something about. but there is a third institution that requires me to put this had on. you can't read it, but it says junior league of washington, and they are the young ladies who have been looking after you in hats, the white and black hats and they just elected be the only male member of the junior league of washington. [applause] the point about them many of you will know they do wonderful work

helping people who are challenged in their reading abilities of all ages, and the fund gatherings and if you want to help them, go straight onto the net. its jlw.com, and michaud region, because that is one of the major themes as i understand it of the festival of books, reading, helping people to read. so that is jlw. i have to say i had a certain disappointment arriving here in washington because i understood that it was traditional that the rain poured down. [laughter] some of you probably wish the rain was pouring down. but i had a special show arranged for this, which i'm going to tell any way. [laughter] which is to do with writing. some of you may have been to the big festival in england and

wales, and traditionally also their the rain pours down. so to get to the tent, you have to wade through mud. this is happening to me to, three years ago. just as i got to the tent, remember this is in wales. you have to do this with a welsh accent. [laughter] "fine weather for biographers." [laughter] and then he added "plenty of feet of clay." very, very true. [laughter] nonetheless, i'm glad that it's shining today. i wanted to say this about the library of congress, which is one of your great national institutions to get to see it. one of the things i came away

with is the jefferson, thomas jefferson library. it's so impressive partly because it's a small. it's not too monumental. it's possible to have it probably in a room and a half, and jefferson organized his library under three headings, not dewey organization. he organized it under memory, a reason, and imagination. and i thought about this and i thought that roughly refines the task of a writer like me, from memory we are going back into history to discover, and particularly the history of science in this case. reason, we try to understand and explain the science that has been done in the past, and imagination we try to bring to life. so for me, there is the jeffersonian concept, memory comer reason, imagination.

recovery important. when i arrived at customs and immigration, the officer looked very carefully at me and then said professor holmes, what is the purpose of your visit? [laughter] now, have you understood this right? the purpose of your visit, this seemed to me like a metaphysical question. [laughter] like what is the purpose of the universe. [laughter] i hardly noticed him stamping and sending me out. and so in a way that is what i want to talk about in this few minutes, the purpose of the visit, the purpose of writing. i was told that i should spend 20 minutes not talking about my book and then ten minutes not answering questions about my book so we will see how we get

on with that. in this shape and for my space to use questions people have that jolie asked me in the brief time i've been here and the first one was did you come from london by hot air balloon? something to do with a cover of the book, to which my quick answer was well, the first hot air balloon that crossed the atlantic from england to america was described by none other than edgar allan poe in the new york sun in 1844. three english pilots including the famous charles green, and the overflew greenland and they landed on the shore somewhere i think in massachusetts. this was the biggest scoop the new york sun had ever had. and then epigram poll realized and revealed was a complete hoax. they never crossed the atlantic. it was the first of his stories

of mystery and imagination. that was an 1844. but the first person who fueled the english channel, it was an english balloon, the pilot was an american, dr. john jeffries. so that's a little bit of history which appears in my book. and the first woman aeronaut was an actress mrs. sage and she has a great term in my book. and at the end of this week coming, i'm going -- look-see it may be the last you'll ever see of me -- to the international balloon fiesta and mexico to fly with the winner of the american hot air challenge cup. bye-bye. [laughter] second question, can you remember your long subtitle.

it's amazing. i just noticed it's not on the cover of the book. anyway, the subtitle is called the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science, and that is in a way my first serious point because this is a history of 18th-century science, but the notion that science is both beautiful and threatening and menacing is the key idea to grasp and one that we have absolutely inherited, and one of the themes of my book is to see how this began in europe and in england and the late 18th century. i will give you one example of this. there's a passage, a chapter describing the invention of the safety which ensure some of you learn about in school by the chemist humphry davy, a brilliant piece of invention might try to describe which prevented the deep mine explosions.

a beautiful invention benefit to mankind, but what happened as a result of that, the miners were sent deeper and deeper into the minds the casualties grew again so it's a double-edged sword, and that would be in a sample. there are others, but that is just one for the book. question, would you describe your book differently to a science graduate or an arts graduate? to a science graduate, i would say this book weighs .98 kilograms, 5 centimeters thick, 45 pages long, it's got 72 footnotes and it's got 306 lines of poetry which is the point that it began to look skeptical. [laughter] how would i describe it to an art graduate? well, i would say this is a

group biography and it takes a particular period between captain cook's first navigation of the globe, 1768, and the charles darwin sitting out in 1831, the famous voyage to the galapagos islands which at that period about 60 years, and it emphasizes the friendship and the contacts and the letter writing and the inspiration that moved between the literary writers and poets and the scientists of the period. now sometimes people say are you sure about this? let me give you one single proof, and i want to read a poem. i promised myself i would read a poem. let me set up. first bullet by a woman poet, and this is again a very important theme of the kind of history i'm writing because i think women have been written out of the history of science certainly in the 18th and 19th century and i think there's a lot of recovery to do. this is by anna working as

assistant to joseph priestley, who as you know was burnt down and he came to the land of the free, to philadelphia, and he worked there for the final years of his life. this is when he was still in england during experiments with a vacuum. some of you may have seen the famous picture by josette darbee which is a bird fluttering in a big vacuum tube, and the idea was to experiment with what was the mysterious gas in the tube that kept the door of a life, and priestley in fact was on the trail of oxygen. he used all kinds of animals and one was a mouse. so he had a laboratory mouse, and anna begin not to worry so much about oxygen, but about the mouse.

and so she wrote a poem, which is called the mouse's petition to dr. priestly found in the cage where he had been confined all night by which we understanding the mouse, not dr. priestley. [laughter] so you have to imagine just like today, the experimental cage this mouse was scheduled to undergo the test the following day and when priestley came down he found this poem. i just want to quote a couple of lines from this. this is anna, who was very well read in science, but certainly putting herself in the place of the non-volunteering mouse, and this is what the analysis to the scientists. for here for long and sad i sit with in the weary great and trumbull of the approaching which brings impending fate. the cheerful white, the vital

air, the blessings widely given. let natures commoners enjoy the common gifts of heaven. the well taught philosophical mind to all compassion kebir, and castor around the world and equal i and fields for all that lives. so there is possibly the first animal rights poem. [laughter] and very interesting that it cannot of this scientific laboratory in 1773. and that is just one tiny example of the thing that happens throughout my book and what interests me so much is the connection between the writer, the literary writer and the scientist. question, why did you change after working for 40 years of literary biography to science biography? i felt there was a slight term

of reproach and that question. why did you do that? the quick answer is i had written about the poet who took the opium, remember, and it turned out his great friend was going to be the chemist of the age and become president of the royal society, and i discovered when davey was experimenting with a new kind of gas, nitrous oxide, which is also called laughing gas, he called for volunteers, and amazingly among them, hot from his opium experiments was a 24-year-old samuel taylor. so you have to imagine the scientist and the poet breeding in the nitrous oxide and then dancing, knocking people over in the street, writing poetry and the influence. it's all there in the book and it's there in the notebooks. so that friendship made me think

if that is the poet and the scientist, maybe there is a much bigger story. so that is one of the things that set me off. i should also say i had an amazing chance when i started to write this book i got a summer fellowship at trinity college cambridge and that is trinity is britain's college, it is the great scientific college in england, and there when you done leyna, i was there for six months, you just sit anywhere on the table. there's a long table, you don't know who you're going to sit next to. and i have to say in the time i was there there were six nobel prize winners and i sat next to each of them and was very interesting to try to ask them questions. one of the things i found is unlike many literary professors, the scientists love it explanting things, and they were really good at doing it and that is something that fascinated me, and now let me give you one pure

example of this that i sat down one evening next to a russian mathematician who spoke no english at all, and it's the one thing i knew is that he knew about the great romantic mathematician, so that is the one thing -- i turned to him and i said everest, and this wonderful smile spread across his face and then he leaned across the table, this college table with all the silverware and he drew all the silverware over him and he began to lay out an algebraic box with of the knives and forks and pepper and explained without using any words of wrist's theory. it caused chaos. the raiders had to come and intervene in the end. [laughter] that was just one. that changed me. if think this is something to

meet people like that i must write about. question, our scientists more mad and poets? [laughter] the answer is no and yes, sir. the story william caroline hershel, tel of brother and sister, a kind of astronomy is extraordinary, very passionate, very interesting relationship follow the ups and downs and extraordinary exchanges. carolina became the first woman astronomer of the period and got a government pension and she did a wonderful thing, she kept a journal just like dorothy of the observations, and they are there in the archive and it's something i was able to use. the first page was written in german and i thought my luck was

out, and then from then on as she was working in england she wrote in english, their story shows a kind of passion which i would certainly as bright and strong as anything of the poet's. question, did you get any fan letters? [laughter] welcome i got a fan letter from nasa, and they pointed out that in the footnote on page 295, where i described the hubble telescope i had gotten one figure who .1% out. but as it referred to the hubble they were not pleased. also have a wonderful form of letter that is relevant now from harold for must, of a nobel

prize winner who is going to be talking immediately after me in another tent who said he recommended my book to the freshmen of amherst college, and the result is i think it broke the bank because the department had to buy 459 copies of it, so that is the kind of fan letter you like. special story yes, one is to keep to link and time which i am rapidly running out of, but let me describe one thing in the book is the use of a vertical foot node. everybody asks me what is a vertical footnote. the main body of the store you to was in chronological time but continue to you want to draw build of that time and go back to what happened before or go forward to see the influence of the footnote which describes the hubble telescope so that is one technique in a way that i felt like paul you and you're

slightly in using the the literary methods to describe scientific fact, the vertical foot node. what are you going to write next? i don't have to answer that question so that rapidly moves us on to the tenth and the last. [laughter] i think i have got two more minutes. the other institution that is responsible for me being here is the "washington post" which i have a huge respect for and they ask this question which is serious. can reuters change the world, and i just want to finish with a draft of the peace i sent about this. i have a literary irish aunt, a fiery fan who once dismissed the question with a snort of derision signed an irish.

writers don't have to change the world. sure, it's changing fast enough anyway. they should try to slow it down instead or maybe make it go backwards. [laughter] so considering this response i slightly reformulated the question when did people stop believing writers should or could change the world because of to the 19th century in europe this was an automatic assumption part of the indictment project central to the idea of progress. knowledge is power, said francis bacon. in 1820 the poet who i've written about could still hopefully say poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. i have to tell you the leader poet said well, that makes writers sound rather like secret policemen. but the exact contemporary, humphry davy sue i mentioned had

a different view and this is something i want to leave you with pity it wasn't writers, but maybe it was the scientists who were changing the world, and he said if you compare shakespeare or francis bacon, milton or newton, who do you think changed the world more? interesting question. and i think there is an answer now but is from the 20th century penicillin air travel mobile phone enter and climate change, etc., that might be the proper response, but then i think the writers have inherited a new form of this question. is it a change for the better or worse? is our moral the kind we want or the kind we should have or the kind we have foolishly lost? do we have reasons to cope or to fear? to dream and wonder or simply

laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing? bye posing such questions and exploring all possible answers, writers are no longer asked to change the world, they are asked continually to imagine that which is a far more radical request, but i am not sure that my aunt would approve all the same. thank you very much. [applause] >> i think we've got time for a couple of questions. are there any in the romantic generation that today would be or should be scientifically clinically categorized as manic depressive, bipolar, schizophrenic or in some other category of mental illness?

>> yes, they're has been a whole thesis written about this bipolar or scientists, my answer to that would be no, but what is very noticeable with someone like vv or the explorer is a recklessness, passion that recklessness that they would push and sacrifice themselves to find the truth to pursue the science for one davie and you can tell me if you think this is manic depressive or not when he was testing the gases the didn't know what they were he in hailed carbon monoxide now used for committing suicide in the backyard. i didn't know it but he and help it and virtually killed himself. he came back and he we inhaled it and wrote as he was leaving

his paulson, his visionary distortions and this note i do not think i shall die. what kind of extremism is that and that happens again and again at this period and that is a kind of recklessness with which i think science is still driven. so this is what the editors of answer. have we got one moment? >> i would be interested in your view of stephen hawking as a popular writer his new book is selling like hotcakes. england and i would be interested in your reaction. >> you should have asked that 25 minutes ago. >> very good question. the book is called a grand design and its controversial because it sounds like an acs tract. that's one of the problems. this is what i have to say about that.