Quotes from George Dyson

Bits that are embodied as structure (varying in space, invariant across time) we perceive as memory, and bits that are embodied as sequence (varying in time, invariant across space) we perceive as code. Gates are the intersections where bits span both worlds at the moments of transition from one instant to the next.

Smee made the leap between mind and mechanism, concluding that "it is apparent that thought is amenable to fixed principles. By taking advantage of a knowledge of these principles it occurred to me that mechanical contrivances might be formed which should obey similar laws, and give those results which some may have considered only obtainable by the operation of the mind itself.

That zero and one were sufficient for logic as well as arithmetic was established by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1679, following the lead given by Thomas Hobbes in his Computation, or Logique of 1656.

The cathode-ray tube (CRT) was a form of analog computer: varying the voltages to the deflection coils varied the path traced by the electron beam. The CRT, especially in its incarnation as an oscilloscope, could be used to add, subtract, multiply, and divide signals—the results being displayed directly as a function of the amplitude of the deflection and its frequency in time. From these analog beginnings, the digital universe took form.

A successful interpretive language both tolerates ambiguity and takes advantage of it. "A language which has maximum compression would actually be completely unsuited to conveying information beyond a certain degree of complexity, because you could never find out whether a text is right or wrong," von Neumann explained

The question of whether something is feasible in a type belongs to a higher logical type. It is characteristic of objects of low complexity that it is easier to talk about the object than produce it and easier to predict its properties than to build it. But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object.

The digital universe and the hydrogen bomb were brought into existence at the same time. "It is an irony of fate," observes Françoise Ulam, "that much of the high-tech world we live in today, the conquest of space, the extraordinary advances in biology and medicine, were spurred on by one man's monomania and the need to develop electronic computers to calculate whether an H-bomb could be built or not.

The conditions for developing organisms with many of the properties considered characteristic of living beings, by evolutionary processes, do not have to be similar to those prevailing on Earth," he concluded, based on his numerical evolution experiments at the IAS. "There is every reason to believe that any planet on which a large variety of molecules can reproduce by interconnected (or symbiotic) autocatalytic reactions, may see the formation of organisms with the same properties.

Software was born. Numerical codes would be granted full control—including the power to modify themselves.1

Computers are designed to be problem solvers, whereas the politicians have inherited the stone age syndrome of the tribal chieftains, who take for granted that they can rule their people only by making them hate and fight all other tribes," Alfvén continued. "If we have the choice of being governed by problem generating trouble makers, or by problem solvers, every sensible man of course would prefer the latter.

It was never enough for him merely to establish a result; he had to do it with elegance and grace.

Computers are designed to be problem solvers, whereas the politicians have inherited the stone age syndrome of the tribal chieftains, who take for granted that they can rule their people only by making them hate and fight all other tribes," Alfvén continued. "If we have the choice of being governed by problem generating trouble makers, or by problem solvers, every sensible man of course would prefer the latter."8

The genius of Monte Carlo—and its search-engine descendants—lies in the ability to extract meaningful solutions, in the face of overwhelming information, by recognizing that meaning resides less in the data at the end points and more in the intervening paths.

Google sought to gauge what people were thinking, and became what people were thinking.

The establishment of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1867 had brought an interlude of peace and prosperity, and a lifting of restrictions against Jews, to a country best known, according to Klári von Neumann, "for the gallantry of its men, the beauty of its women, and last, but not least, for its hopelessly unhappy and unlucky history.

History is one of the only fields where contributions by amateurs are taken seriously, providing you follow the rules and document your sources. In history, it's what you write, not what your credentials are.

I have had a Twitter account since the very beginning but have never used it: I haven't tweeted anything, and I haven't followed anyone.

The unlimited replication of information is generally a public good.

When you click on a link, you are replicating the string of code that it links to. Replication of code sequences isn't life, any more than replication of nucleotide sequences is, but we know that it sometimes leads to life.

Digital organisms, while not necessarily any more alive than a phone book, are strings of code that replicate and evolve over time. Digital codes are strings of binary digits - bits.