ENCORE  It’s the most dramatic technical development of
recent times: Teams of people working for decades to produce a
slow-motion revolution we call computing. As these devices become
increasingly powerful, we recall that a pioneer from the nineteenth
century – Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and Lord Byron’s daughter –
said they would never surpass human ability. Was she right?
We consider the near-term future of computing as the Internet of
Things is poised to link everything together, and biologists adopt
the techniques of information science to program living cells.
Plus: What’s your favorite sci-fi computer?
Guests:



Walter Isaacson – President and CEO of the Aspen
Institute and the author of
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created
the Digital Revolution
Christopher
Voigt – Bioengineer at MIT
Andy
Ihnatko – Technology journalist
André
Bormanis – Writer, screenwriter, Star
Trek
John
Barrett – Electronic engineer, NIMBUS Centre for
Embedded Systems Research at the Cork Institute of Technology,
Ireland

First released December 7, 2014.