George Dyson, son of a nuclear physicist, starts his presentation by saying: “Most of my parent’s friends were extremely boring”. Well, George Dyson is not... I think most of the conference audience is amazed that a historical mini-lecture on technology development can be this entertaining. John Van Neumann (The Van Neumann Maschine) is both stand-up material and interesting knowledge.
One of the more serious things Dyson said (a little revised):
- The computer revolution was let by Van Neumann, and due to his thinking the world has now changed to something completely different. Neumann saw the computers as something you need to feeding with instruction, but he alså made todays computing possible, where cemputers only need very few inputs. Google is an example of a computer system, that is expanding and "gaining knowledge" when we sleep.
Just watched the live-stream of Jane McGonigal. What food for thought. I am always trying to come up with tools etc that help innovation teams that are distributed in time and soace actually get something done. Without the right inputs and co-created vision the teams tend to slide into incremental thinking. This presentation showed me a way forward.
We in UK have just had a transport review that is not really a social answer so maybe we need to turn it into a great game to develop acceptable solutions... over to Charles Leadbetter!!??
Posted by: JIm Rait | December 01, 2006 at 16:14