Decoding Tech

Innovations in artificial intelligence are not only changing the present, they’re also revolutionizing the study of history. In this episode, an expert panel shares their groundbreaking work deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls, which were burned in the same volcanic eruption that destroyed nearby Pompeii and were thought to have been lost forever.

The panel included:

Nat Friedman, investor and entrepreneur who co-launched the Vesuvius Challenge

Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor of papyrology at the University of Naples Federico II

Brent Seales, the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky.

CHM Senior Producer and Manager of Programming Russell Ihrig moderated.

The program was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

This conversation was recorded on June 10, 2025 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Do you know who has your personal data? Experts featured in NOVA’s documentary, Secrets In Your Data, explored this question and more on stage at CHM.

The Panel included Eva Galperin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Patrick Jackson of Disconnect, and Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive

Physician Alok Patel, who also hosted the NOVA episode, moderated.

This conversation was recorded on May 16, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

How can we ensure that every language—and the communities that speak them—can fully participate in the digital world? Hear from Unicode pioneers and language experts as they discuss the evolution of language support, the barriers to true linguistic inclusivity online, and why ensuring digital access is about more than just code—it’s about culture, identity, and the survival of languages.

PANEL:

Roy Boney, Jr, Cherokee Language Revitalization Manager at Cherokee Film

Mark Davis, Cofounder and CTO, Unicode Consortium

Anushah Hossain, Research Director of the Script Encoding Initiative

Moderator: Teresa Marshall, Vice President of Globalization & Localization at Salesforce

This conversation was recorded on May 13, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on a QWERTY keyboard with only a few dozen keys designed for English? Thomas Mullaney, professor of Chinese history at Stanford University, shares insights about this challenge from his book, The Chinese Computer: a Global History of the Information Age in a conversation with Yangyang Chen, a research scholar and fellow at the Yale Law School.

This program was generously supported by the Bin Lin and Daisy Liu Family Foundation.

The conversation was recorded on June 18, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

From AI to data analysis and visualization, technology is reshaping the news. To discuss journalistic challenges presented by new technologies, CHM brought together Marian Chia-Ming Liu from the Washington Post, Jason Koebler from 404 Media, and Alex Reed from Mapping Black California. The conversation was moderated by David Yarnold, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News.

This event was recorded on April 16, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Is AI a threat to humanity or a partner with the power to unlock our full potential? Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Inflection AI and former board member of OpenAI shared his insights and hopes for the future in a conversation with Anne Dwane of Village Global.

This conversation was recorded on October 30, 2023, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Do Large Language Models like Chat GPT have the “sparks” of true intelligence, or are they merely “stochastic parrots,” lacking understanding and meaning. Hear a debate on this matter between University of Washington's computational linguist Emily Bender and OpenAI's Sébastien Bubeck. IEEE Spectrum Senior Editor Eliza Strickland moderates

This program was a partnership with IEEE Spectrum and was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. 

This conversation was recorded on March 25, 2025 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Khan Academy founder Sal Khan joined KQED’s Rachael Myrow on stage to share insights from his new book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing).

This conversation was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and was a partnership with Silicon Valley Reads. It was recorded on March 11, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Over the last fifteen years, India has evolved from a primarily cash-based society to the country with the highest volume of digital payments in the world. Hear how this was accomplished from one of the primary architects of India’s digital public infrastructure, Pramod Varma, in a discussion with M.R. Rangaswami, the founder of Indiaspora, CEF, and Sand Hill Group.

This conversation was recorded on May 30, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org

Learn about the origin story of Bill Gates, one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age. In this episode Gates discusses his deeply personal new memoir, Source Code, in conversation with Patrick Collison, cofounder and CEO of Stripe.

This conversation was recorded on February 11, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.

To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org