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Title: Turing's Cathedral

Subtitle: The Origins of the Digital Universe

Author: George Dyson

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-06-12

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 231 votes

Genres: Science & Technology, Technology

Publisher's Summary:

Legendary historian and philosopher of science George Dyson vividly re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution - in other words, computer code.

In the 1940s and '50s, a group of eccentric geniuses - led by John von Neumann - gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their joint project was the realization of the theoretical universal machine, an idea that had been put forth by mathematician Alan Turing. This group of brilliant engineers worked in isolation, almost entirely independent from industry and the traditional academic community. But because they relied exclusively on government funding, the government wanted its share of the results: the computer that they built also led directly to the hydrogen bomb. George Dyson has uncovered a wealth of new material about this project, and in bringing the story of these men and women and their ideas to life, he shows how the crucial advancements that dominated twentieth-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born.

Critic Reviews:

The most powerful technology of the last century was not the atomic bomb, but software - and both were invented by the same folks. Even as they were inventing it, the original geniuses imagined almost everything software has become since. At long last, George Dyson delivers the untold story of softwares creation. It is an amazing tale brilliantly deciphered. (Kevin Kelly, cofounder of WIRED magazine, author of What Technology Wants)

It is a joy to read George Dysons revelation of the very human story of the invention of the electronic computer, which he tells with wit, authority, and insight. Read Turings Cathedral as both the origin story of our digital universe and as a perceptive glimpse into its future. (W. Daniel Hillis, inventor of The Connection Machine, author of The Pattern on the Stone)

Members Reviews:

Turing's vision; Von Neumann's construction

While good coverage and credit is given to Turing for the ideas that he had and the work he did to spark the computer revolution this book is more focused on Von Neumann as the driving force behind creating the machine at the Institute for Advanced Studies, sometimes referred to as MANIAC.

I assume that the book title may have been driven a little by marketing department awareness that Alan Turing has become a commonly known name amongst those with more than passing interest in the history of computing while Von Neumann is yet to gain the 'household name' level of recognition that he deserves.

While the 'Turing Machine' was a stunning intellectual achievement in abstract thinking about the science and mathematics of computing the actual machines that we are using are often, and rightly, described as 'Von Neumann Machines'

If you know the subject well this is a great summary and includes interesting facts that you may well not know about just how things got done.