be the future empire.

>> in his book "the innovators"." during this event held at the computer history museum in mountain view california mr. isakson discusses his book with computer history museum president and ceo john hollar and then takes audience questions. >> and now for tonight's program program, the history of computing is the ongoing story of how one of the greatest periods of creativity in human history has been unleashed. it is

he even sorts out the real story between the internet. walter will take us on a journey starting with the distant figures but important figures of

john babich. please join me in welcoming walter isaacson. c thank you john. it's great to be back and this is an amazingly wonderful place. it's such an honor to be back here and you can even reveal my inner geek if you need to. c i think you are about to do that yourself. >> i grew up soldering ham radios. my dad was an electrical engineer and i love circuit boards so it's good to get back and write about them. >> is that how you originally got into this? did you develop the kind of fascination with that kind of technology before you knew what he wanted to do? >> one of the things you think is a biographer it's partly about pleasing dad. my dad was an electrical engineer and he made me understand how it transistor capacitor resistor worked. i was so fascinated by that i just wanted to sort of convey that excitement.

most people in this room probably remember opening things up and testing the tubes in your radio, figuring out how to make a circuit that nowadays i feel that our devices are so close to that we don't get that hands-on feel and excitement that i had growing up. and then i was in charge of digital media for a time incorporated and at one point my boss and i won't say his name since we are on tv set who owns the internet? i thought to myself that the clueless question. how did it come to be? who built this? i thought that's clueless but i did not know the answer to that. and i thought it would be really interesting to figure out who the people did the internet -- internet and when i interviewed bill gates. one of the lucky things about being a time as you get to interview these people. he said yes but the intersection of internet with a personal computer that's like the steam engine and the mel's

intersecting during the industrial revolution. you want to do both of those stories. so i realize we have lots of books about the scientific revolution or even the french revolution and the american revolution but we don't know since paul revere of the digital revolution even though we live it every day. >> lowish inspiration or beginning where you began because you go back to computing which we level course. you go back to babich. >> as long as i am embarrassing every member of my family, my daughter was supposed to be writing her entrance essay to go to college and being the type of family that we are we thought parents are supposed to be involved in this process. she thought to the contrary and so is not even talking to us about. my wife was getting a little jittery like why have you read it. finally she said well i've written it and i said who is a

bond or was on? she said ada lovelace. i actually did know who i ada lovelace was that i could remember what was it that she did that really helped define the digital and computer revolution? so my daughter got me turned onto ada lovelace. i was already writing this book. i have been working on it off and on for 15 years but i needed some frame for it and the more he studied lord byron's daughter and her partnership with charles babbage the more i realized that's a great framing device for the connection of the humanities and poetry to processors and engineering. you remember when i was here talking about steve jobs and i think we even showed it that everyone of this product launch

as product launch is he a bad intersection of the liberal arts and technology are the liberal arts and sciences. that is what ada lovelace was with her father being a romantic poet and her mother being a mathematician she helped create that intersection which is where the creativity happen in the digital age. >> there's a thesis in the book as you begin the story that i just want to spin out so everyone understands. this is a passage i picked out. he wrote the key to innovation creative genius and a bit of ideas practical engineers partnered to turn concepts into contraptions and clever teams of technicians and entrepreneurs work to turn the invention to practical product. you believed in that ecosystem and you referred to the ecosystem again and again, that genius in the practical engineer in the process of collaboration. babbage and lovelace had their own form of that collaboration

from very early on. >> right we shouldn't overstate her. she was in some ways not as great a mathematician and she would like to have the lead but she could generate and understand the sequence of renewing members and make a chart for them that becomes the first published program. whenever somebody disparages this is ada lovelace day so we should all celebrate it. [applause] i say okay tell me the seventh and eighth and the sequence tenth, 11th and 12th of the numbers and how you would chart a mechanical process like that one to generate them. and then people understand what a partnership she had and how important she was to babbage trying to create what he thought was a numerical calculator. but she has the great insight. it's not just for numbers. you know, her mom had taken her to the midlands of england to

look at the mechanical weaving rooms that were using punch cards. you have those punch cards downstairs in this museum. they are the punchcards of the lamb, the map -- mechanical limbs of the industrial revolution that aid us on that trip. now her father lord byron was a luddite and i mean that literally. the only speech he gives in the house of lords is defending the followers who were smashing those limbs because they thought it put people out of work. this disruptive technology is not new. it goes back a long time. disruption is not new. so ada instead of thinking as these machines will put people out of work she said oh these punch cards and take a look at them, they are cool, she has aligned in our wonderful set of notes she does on the analytical engine she says it will make the

machine be able to weave patterns just like the limb can and then she says so the machine will be able to do anything that can be notated symbolically. not just numbers but words. it will make music she said. he will do pictures. it will do patterns. in other words it will be a computer not just a calculator. so she's pretty awesome. >> you point out that she is simultaneously may be one of the most over appreciated and underappreciated people in the history of computing. why is that? >> i think she has sort of grab onto sometimes a publicist. there are a lot of good books about her. betty toole has written two books. all the wonderful letters of the great analysis book and she's very favorable to the world of data. there are couple of other books. doris lane has done a book on the analytical of charles

babbage. the most scientific book i think is dorothy steins ada which does a balanced and if i can find it even then -- there's such a controversy. i kind of like controversy. i'm an old journalist who likes those things but i sort of explain sort of explained. there is some guy who did his ph.d. at harvard and he rode ada was a manic depressive with the most amazing delusions better talent. she was mad as a hatter and contributed little more to babich's notes than trouble. so you know you do have -- i do think you don't have to overstate her accomplishments in order to totally marvel at how wonderful it was that she saw the magic in the humanities that can be connected to the machine. so i try, as i do in all the books i made the interesting thing about the digital age is

that it's very collaborative and people work together and then afterwards they fight over who deserves the most credit. i think al alcorn is there who actually helps with the engineer for the first atari machine and even now they are all these things -- people gathered around saying no i did more, i did more. so i tried very judiciously to say here are some of the dash but by the way this revolution is so amazing there is enough credit to go around. we should be fighting over it. >> we have four stories on the stage tonight. we started with babbage and lovelace in the second is the enigma. >> that's really cool. >> which we will talk about in a minute and the altair pc pc and the apple one in the middle we are going to talk about eniac women. let's turn to allen chernin and

code breaking. you do something really interesting which is the magical year of 1937 a point in history when everything seems to be converging all at once from many places on the globe. >> yes, you know one of the things about the history of technology or any history is that it's not totally revolutionary. we build on things like babbage's engine but every now and then it's a punctuated evolution and things happen. 37 is one of those years partly because of the combination of analytic science like claude shannon figuring out information theory and people understanding how algebra which allows you to do logical sequences based simply on on/off switches with connects to the fact that they have a vacuum tubes going now and they can make circuits with on/off switches so bell labs and other places they are making these advances using algebra and

then you have turning. turing has many things that he does but let's start with ada lovelace because ada lovelace as i told you said the machine will be able to do everything. weave tapestries like the limb music whatever but she says there's one thing a machine will never be able to do and that's think. it will be humans that do the creativity. so allen turing says that his lady lovelace's objection. 100 years later he is reading the objection the machine will never thing. he comes up with the test how do we know machines will never think and you put a machine in that room and a person in the remedies and questions and if you can't tell the difference after while there's no empirical reason to say the machine is not thinking. you can have a lot of people

like jr searle says that's not a very good test but the test is ingrained to how we look at artificial intelligence. a movie is coming out in three of four weeks called the imitation game. it's about sub -- turing going the test. the combination of human machines will always be more powerful than just machines doing artificial intelligence alone and that's one of the things in the book. it ends with how watson and deeply the two machines ibm built in the end become more powerful when combined with the imagination of human so that they ada lovelace strand. did we get to leslie park. he goes to the secret facility they have in england to break

the german wartime codes. the machine there is an enigma machine which codes the german messages. fortunately i think they are able to slowly break how the code is done. one of the amazing things that turing does is figure out a long with tommy flowers who did the vacuum tubes and worked for the phone company how you would make something called colossus which is the first real electronic operable computer and they use it to break the german code. so when we argue about what is the first computer, one contender if you're thinking it's got to be electronic, it's got to do logical sequences it probably ought to be digital. colossus breaking the code that was done on that machine by turing in the whole team there

at slightly park and especially tommy flowers. >> there are to other players in 1937 which you cover and i want to bring into the drama now. you explore the had enough of story. >> we have someone who has re-created it. >> thank you. he has read part of the book and i don't actually give credit for building the first computer. here is the argument. he's a bit of a loner. he is driving an old small bill where he tried to missouri where he can get a drink by the glass because iowa was a dry state. he comes up with this notion of using circuits laconic circuits to do logical processing and he

builds one in the basement at iowa state was just a graduate student but he has no team around him. and they get it pretty good. it's a pretty nice little machine that they can never fully get it working. why? because they don't have mechanics and engineers. the punch card burner didn't quite work and poor atanasoff goes to the navy. it's the middle of the war and end the people at iowa state have no idea what this contraption is and they throw it away which is why you have to re-created to be part of this museum. so in some ways vision without execution is -- so i don't think he could be called the first computer. >> let's turn to the one that you do talk about and you prefer in this pecking order first computers, the one that john mockley later joined by pressler

debt burden are working on in pennsylvania. >> john mockley is typical of the great innovators of the digital age. he was somebody who love to go and pick up ideas. he's from washington and his father was at the carnegie institution. he was one of those people who loved coming to places like this hearing lectures being at explorers club's going to dinners. so he starting in the late 1930s went to places like the 1939 world's fair to harvard where mach 1 is being built which is a nonelectronic electromechanical computer and he even runs into at a lecture this guy atanasoff. he says i'm building one in my basement at iowa state. mockley gets in his car with his kid, think six years old maybe nine years old and drives to

iowa state and looks at the machine and take some notes goes back and when he gets back to the university of pennsylvania he gets press for eckert who is a good engineer and six women who will become the mathematical programmers. you've got a part of it in the smithsonian downstairs and it is the first working machine and is also reprogrammable things to their women. it's fully electronic unlike "the innovators"'s at iowa state and unlike his that actually works. so i tend to say if you are looking for the one they're really works that's programmable digital and electronic that is really the first computer. the one in laishley park was special purpose which was just breaking the code. this he could have the cables

replug replied that he could make it do other things. typically we all collaborate and we take ideas. steve jobs goes to xerox parc and bill gates uses the first mcintosh. everybody's taking each others' ideas and then of course apple sues microsoft. not surprisingly there were 15 years of the lawsuit because after eniac has built it becomes univac in his commercial form. univac becomes unisys berry rant of a sort of forcing the patent side at which point honeywell wants to break the pact and he finds atanasoff who is retired. he said that i visited me at my ideas. for 15 years you have a lawsuit over who deserves the patent. in the end the court ruled against the eniac people and didn't award the patent to anybody which is probably correct because it was a collaborative thing. >> we have a trusty gordon bell

famous in computer history who calls out the invention of the computer. >> exactly. with all due respect to the lawyers in the room it's best not to leave the whole notion of historical invention to copyright lawsuits. there's a wonderful one where jack kildee at texas instruments and bop noise and gordon moore who are pictured in the lobby almost simultaneously do the microchip. this -- but noise noise and kildee were such decent people they always gave each other the credit and before the lawyers could settle the suit went on and on but finally noise in the texas instrument people got together and shake hands and let's cross lines with each other. let's get the lawyers out of this. >> let's go back to the eniac women because it's another little known story and computing

were mockley and eckert recruit these young women mostly math majors from small midwestern colleges. bring them all to pennsylvania and decide that they are going to be assigned the task of programming this computer. why are they simultaneously so bisguir and yet play such an important role at the key moment? >> partly barofsky or because this is happening during war and eniac was originally done mainly to calculate missile trajectories for the artillery tables. the words ending in and by 1946 they realized they had to do other things such as john von neumann arrives and says i wanted to know if this hydrogen bomb concept will work so they did explosion implosion for the hydrogen bomb and women's are the one who understand how to

program it by unplugging it and re-plugging cables and turning off switches. the boys with the toys said they were in charge and the day that they unveiled eniac finally in 1946 it's february. it's valentine's day. "the new york times" is they are in there all sorts of data tories from all over and they are finally going to show off that they have this new machine. jeanne jennings, think france's villas and others they do the program. they had to stay up all night. they got one thing wrong they couldn't figure it out. they finally figured it out. it was perfect for the demonstration. everybody goes to this wonderful candlelit dinner at 10:00, black tie on the pages in their times but the women are invited. it was valentine's day and they take the bus back to their apartment feeling bad that they

didn't get invited to the dinner. so when you wonder about women and technology we all have to have role models. i talk to you about my dad. you've got to put these people back in history so that everybody feels included in this revolution and they have role models. >> i think as you know we inducted -- [applause] we inducted jane bardic as a fellow. >> jeanne jennings bardic and you should buy her autobiography which is published posthumously i think and it's on line now. here's some little thing about it that you should think about too. she's from atlanta's grove missouri, town of 127 people tiny town. she is one of seven or eight children poor farm family and she decided she wanted to go to college because her family cares

about education. for about $78 a year she gets to go to missouri state teachers college. she decides she doesn't -- he wants to be a mathematician and back then that was fine. women could be mathematicians so without $78 she becomes a mathematician and sees the advertisement as she graduates saying come to philadelphia and work on eniac. we need mathematicians. she goes and becomes this pioneer programmer. that college right now costs $14,000 a year. we should not cut off the ability to allow everybody to get a good education. [applause] >> anyway read dean's book. >> and she was so accomplished in her own right that she went with eckert and mockley and continued her career.

>> and grace hopper who is the other woman pioneer programmer. the good thing about markley and eckert they may not have invited the women to that february 1976 -- but they made up for it because they hired a lot of women including grace hopper and jeanne jennings arctic and john mockley actually married one of them who became kate markley but also hired her and married her. i guess that was done back then. she became one of the great pioneer programmer stu and it's interesting that fewer women go into computer science now than did 20 years ago. that's why it's good to have sheryl sandberg and marissa and others here. >> there's a terrific film to give us a call top secret rosie's which is about these women. >> there's another one on, you should go on line and google them is there are a couple of documentaries that have been

made about them. >> let's move on. you mentioned the semiconductor earlier and i want to talk now about the transistor and the integrated circuit but i want to talk about it to draw a contrast the way that you explains the way teams and collaboration happened and by contrasting two very different approaches. one is the shockley approach and his team working on the transistor on the one hand and then noise and the circuit on the other. talk a bit about shockley the genius inventor. >> shockley of course you all know about, a genius but also paranoid and eventually racist. he is at bell labs which is by far the coolest place for collaboration in the 1930s and 40s and throughout the mid-to late 40s they have to figure out how to do many things which

one is to amplify a phonecall signal. they need a solid state amplifier. you can't build it with vacuum tubes so shockley is leading the solid-state team at bell labs. i love bell labs because it's the ultimate playspace collaboration ware in the hallways there you have john bardeen who is a theorist and shockley was a great physicist but they are sharing a workspace and the bench with walter bratton who is an experimentalist. he knows how to take a piece of silicon which as you know is a semiconductor that you can fill with impurities and make it conduct better or worse and therefore be an on/off switch and a solid state amplifier and a circuit which understands understanding quantum theorem but also material science like

what's happening to those electrons dancing in the surface state of a piece of silicon? so they are doing all these things. bardeen and bratton almost do a response. as they figure out ways to make the various materials they are using into better semiconductors and using a paperclip. they are working under shockley. they finally do it. shockley has contributed many of the theories but he has been a bit hands off. but unlike the heroes of this book he doesn't like giving giving credit as much as he likes taking credit, so even when they put on the application application, they put on the application for the patent and

he insists that he be in all the press releases. ..

>> >> but after a while they just cannot stand working for shockley. in you can see in those notebooks and then it is decided the authoritarian bossy glory hogging way that's shockley has been doing. in a big room nobody has a corner office. there is no hierarchy and

intends not only the microchip but also the silicon valley culture. >> we had courted here for the 50th anniversary. >> i love to just sitting to him it was fantastic semipaste to what was like if he said he was difficult to work for but he was a pretty good judge of talent. [laughter] that is probably the only egotistical thank. [laughter] but certainly got the save laugh that everybody gave us tonight. so shockley is the anomaly in that ecosystem in that narrative. and a seemingly have those ingredients and the practical engineer and the ecosystem.

but shockley's big failure was not just being a jerk but came up with the transistor he kept insisting woodworking and did not. sometimes you just get a wrong. and here is another saying that you need the business person to turn into a real product like texas instruments. >> and that transistor radio their revolutionize american cultures. >> i love the transistor radio going back to ada lovelace because it makes the devices personal.

not let's create artificial intelligence from touring. that they have these transistors but they have the true massmarket. period schaede is important that is a limited market. radios were a share and appliance. you have something that is shared like a computer that somebody makes personal. and they make the region see transistor radio. if you need to control the dial. that same month elvis presley picked up his first album. i am convinced and it would

be a hard time taking off. and in the year the '60s i remember getting my transistor radio. and to listen to any music you wanted especially when your parents did not like. but i think more importantly with the trajectory of digital revolution nobody

knew we needed 1,000 songs in our pocket until steve jobs said yes. music is personal. now we talk about the story that is completely wound up with paul gait -- bill gates and paul allen. and let's focus on gates and allen. did you intend to examine that personal relationship as part of the story? >> but often teams have a payoff.

en to people who work together to form the colonel and i mean minicomputer's cents. angeles talking to bill gates he said no. and i saw an interview with him in seattle. but the real -- really important thing is when the altair comes along and does exactly what we said it is a big impersonal thing like a computer that up until then that would be orwellian from the big corporations.

roberts makes it something a hobbyist can do. from all due respect it is rekeying. but people went to nuts because you could make it do things. it didn't have any programming. one of the things that the recovery journalist to believe is if you have a great product and nobody hears it one of the cool things that roberts did was to get it on the cover of popular mexican -- electronics. in the middle of harvard square and has convinced ball to you drop out and not

do much of anything. and then touche register through the sloth to the carrier house which is bill gates house at harvard to say this is happening without us and build starts rocking. as you know, . he is about to go to examine bibelots them all off and they sit there using the computer right next to the one that hopper had done. that was a later version of the one from the harvard computation lab and bill gates basically does not to shave at this point so they figure out what to do. and they realize paul will have to bring it to albuquerque.

but bill is in charge so said we have a version of basic but instead says he is paul allen to make his voice deeper and says if you walk through the door with a you have it. so then paul fleiss to albuquerque. they make the first of two good deals. but we get to license it. does that sound familiar? so that becomes the standard >> that that anecdote pretend you are meet to talk to the guy on the phone is very telling. there is another anecdote earlier when they were young boys working in seattle

there were four of them. they get a contract that paul allen becomes convinced not bill gates but they get halfway through and discover they cannot do it so allen calls gates to say we are in trouble the and you have to come back. want to read this because it is so interesting and gates says okay but i will be in charge. and it will be hard to deal with me unless i am in charge. if you put me in charge i.m. in charge of this and anything else we do. >> and the rest is history. >> that is an interesting story. [laughter] and it turns out that way.

>> let you have to have good live-in visionary. and while i was speaking about the book we talked about it. and that steve jobs related start driving. and he really did start to drive microsoft i tried not to be judgmental about that. you should read paul allen's book and he has some resentment but bill gates was pretty awesome. >> there are several other passages that he referred to in this section that it

seems clear that we just understood this is the way to get things done. they seem to take their roles on. >> sometimes we think these partnerships and collaborations are mysterious but then we step back. in to this is the way life is. sometimes partnerships have a lot of tension with that product launch and i was in the greenroom is and we should not be too judgmental about partnerships especially when they create microsoft and apple.

>> that is the vital relationship. >> one is going up for auction at $600,000. >> it even has the signature >> you have such a complete story did you want to eliminate anything? and with the contributions in so people don't feel gypped that they already read the chapter by here is what i discovered when writing about steve jobs we think he is a great visionary. and he is.

but what he did extraordinarily well even though he was tough to deal with he could be tough on people he developed an incredible set of teams that were collaborative. one of the last things i asked is what is the thank you created you are the most proud of? i thought he would say the icon or the knife company said a product is very hard. to create a company that continue to bring product is even harder. silicon that original team from 1984 half of them were in this room for all of them would say i think that was a'' in the highlights reel

that i would not give enough for anything in the world to make me do things i could not do. in is the valley people quit all those other companies whether the original macintosh team that steve headed apple in the past decade that is incredibly good team those who have a great deal for beauty and art so i discovered that besides being a visionary he was also a team builder. and probably doesn't get enough credit from being a collaborative team builder if you look at collaboration on with the pta would see his spitzer ended the and deserves credit for building

the most loyal team ever. to give people the impression we're on a journey. to talk about the on-line world and then the rise of the internet and what is the story that you thought was emblematic? >> emblematic of the digital revolution but you have to have one or two unsung heroes and then this personality to get credit more than take it and when a at m.i.t. and other places

takes the notion of the interactive computer display it you have to know quickly and also realizing and you have to have 23 all over the country and instantly connect it comes up with a humorous phrase the intergalactic computer network and gets to the pentagon then he has a school people all working clever they flee to create the protocols for the host of those then eventually bob and then if you have the network they need to internet worked hence the phrase internet protocol and

they do the tccip together. but back in 1990 the internet's is big and wonderful but you cannot get on it if you are a normal person you have to be at a university or research lab you cannot just from home dial up. likewise the personal computer most of those who invented it wanted as a personal creativity to will. but something amazing have been denied to 94 is starting with the on-line services meaning though well as a flailing company but

once again you needed a team called the endless september even the denison's a new wave would come on the internet because it went to college now they're on the internet now it is called the september problem. they would post a the bulletin boards. but because of the al gore with aol it it allows the internet to be opened up to a low services. delphi was one of the first. and suddenly we go on to a

at -- a well to have the open gate to the internet it was called then listened timber because from then on people start flooding on but it did a good thing to allow the internet to get back to the theme to become personal. something the rest of us could use. >> to match that up to the cultural with the holocaust that we go through all that turmoil in the united states with the complete upheaval of social norms and campus unrest that it would really be free and everybody needed to be a part of that this marriage of on line and computing played into that. >> and this is the epicenter

maybe i should say this is the g spot. [laughter] said it begins in the '70s and all the way through. i put these passages online as the community organizer so these chapters became crowd sourced and there was of building of tribes but right here the people from the defense industry from hewlett-packard but also though whole earth crowd comment as stewart does something very cool and help

to edit this chapter online. then that anti-war act and then folded you later was the antiwar statement read what corporations to own our machines. out of that comes those doing the mother of all demos. there is a cauldron that has one common flavor and anti-authoritarian let's make the tools personal and that is when the personal computer rises and the notion of the switchboards and bulletin boards and on-line services and though well and eventually the world wide web. >> host: musec the project aside to work on the steve

jobs biography. first of all you have bed working on it for a long time. how difficult the because of all this work you we're doing? >> i have been gathering strength for 50 years since the early '90s when i was doing mitt -- media. and i may not be the best historical researcher. and to know the archives at stanford. and i may not be the best blood ashley best journalists but i know how to mesh the to to say i have a really good fortune in my life having been at a place

in my life that if i recall very page to say go through with me he says fine and i show up. so i have that little advantage that comes from being a journalist. i tried to put those together that meant every time i interview in the grove i spend time with him. i was did no rush to write the book especially when i had the chance to reduce steve jobs it was not painful to put it aside. but i want to pull it together. >> here is one about bell

labs. what do you think of bell labs of today? and many other great solutions, we have a lot of corporate basic research that is being done. you can see that with google but then it is the recipe in 1945 for personal computer but also beyond running though gore for the manhattan project of the corps for research center's

big universities like stanford m.i.t. and private corporations. but those were the days of bell labs were at the highlights where we did research in this country every congressman could be made to read science the next frontier. eisenhower is the perfect president with the academy and the military and what he says said the memo that the employment to get future inventions. the internet the laser, the

microchip we are decimating that. but the cutbacks of research funding. >> that is a nice way to say bell labs. [laughter] hands since the book has been now a whole week if you have read the book and your name appears in the index please raise your hand. [applause] charlie stand up. you are. [laughter] the now weighing is sitting there at ucla and they were

conducting the notes. and the first to routers of what they were called it was a packet switched the interface message process then i think they were at stanford? >> in to monitor as stanford trying to law agin -- log in. that word. >> we know the difference. it fits into the saying. and he said my system crashed i will call you back

[laughter] >> who else is in the index? we're getting live testimony here. i like that. is this is a wonderful question. is reading and researching these famous figures has it changed your outlook and the way you think about yourself?

and especially in the periods of the academy not part of a collegial group and that is the general theory of relativity. with the collaboration is the team sport. and to realize is i would not be einstein or steve jobs. and putting together teams getting people to collaborate you are all isolated and i was in washington d.c.. and i like being at the aspen institute.

and i became more fixated of the rise of the of west. with people working together collaboratively so i became more interested in the notion to be a collaborative sport. and with silicon valley was not happy. >> i think the revolution that is too hard to get into here is the most ingrained in the genetic code of the digital revolution that there is a distributed peer to peer network of

creativity. with that peer to peer every single blood is powerful to distribute information. that peer to peer networking is integral to the digital revolution or that may be true of the new biotech revolution. and how satisfied were you with that? >> i was blown away. benjamin franklin creates the colonial postal service to share ideas with the

american and philosophical society. we have been doing that forever. whenever i wrote a book before i said comment or correct but now with anti-authoritarian i got 17,000 comments or corrections which is really cool. and a lot of them are in there. this book should not just be a book handed down.

i want all of this up your at the next thing i want to do was a book like this something like with the pds document but even multimedia. from that very first day to become part of the book and i have pictures and video is all applauded and thousands of people could do a collaborative book i think it should be traded but tb from abroad source living multimedia book that in the

next phase i think with a bit cold rain or other ec currency, ec currency and if it is collaborative for the content to always be free that money can be allocated just like the of royalties from songs or whatever are allocated. i envision fiber tenures and now collaborative croats sourced royalty shared multi media. >> let's do that here. absolutely. [applause] there is one additional story.

>> but when with the pds -- wikipedia gave up like a lot of people i was fascinated about the power of collaborative sourcing. and i am stunned at how reliable it is. of course, idiots can put the new san but then you had the aversion button and then with more intensity than the real wars we're fighting now.

so wikipedia on einstein says 1937 he secretly travel to albania but not one word in that sentence is true. so i take it out. it comes back. it always does the citations like from the ldp and expatriate and then saying he was walking down the street and met albert einstein. in somebody's cousins said he kept getting pushed back and. to save know it is not true.

it is the passport he was using. but finally the century turns out to be correct. and at first i did not attribute this because the wisdom of the crowd got a wrong. i was the one who perfected it. and then to add a tidy bit of wisdom that excluded me and you and everybody else. that is when i became a fait and of crowd sourcing and collaboration. >> at love that story and your vision. >> that is it with the audience questions but i want to close to the theme

is very much an original idea you gave the jefferson lecture this summer at the endowment of the humanities. so it is the theme you are beginning to explore? >> the book begins with ada and ends with ada because that combination has turned out to be more powerful even with the singularity but it is always 20 years away. whenever but did the meantime but the end of the book that the google algorithm is an algorithm

that also connects to human judgments for those to put the lead on their web it is a combination of human creativity. and casper office is having teams these are the best. so as a part of that vision to connect to ms. to technology.

and now with the medium that is not just the platform to make it more intimate but steve jobs makes a personal. so maybe a someday there will be a signal clarity well machines will leave us behind. a to be there with mary shelley with frankenstein with the feed of that but i always believed that those who feel comfortable at the intersection of the humanities are like steve jobs.

>> we like our authors to read a little boy at -- a little bit in their own voice and let's reflect from the paragraph from the very end. >>. >> they key you very much. >> because we're able to think of an algorithm almost by definition that we possess that as is ada lovelace said bring together facts and ideas and conceptions and do all our regional combinations. we appreciate their beauty with storytelling as well as social animals. human creativity is values

with personal consciousness this is what the arts and humanities teaching us. man with engineering in zaph with that computer symbiosis as a creative partner we must continue to nurture the wellsprings of our imagination and originality and humidity that is what we bring to the party. >> fantastic. thank you. [applause] . .