Turing's Cathedral

The Origins of the Digital Universe

By: George Dyson

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—and our universe would never be the same.

Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars.

Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic developments: the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.

How did code take over the world? In retracing how Alan Turing’s one-dimensional model became John von Neumann’s two-dimensional implementation, Turing’s Cathedral offers a series of provocative suggestions as to where the digital universe, now fully three-dimensional, may be heading next.

A Book Better in Print for Non-Coders

I think it is a book chock full of info, but it is presented in such a random manner: 1903, 1956, 1943, 1998, that I couldn’t keep it straight. Now digital data is part of analog machines...now analog machines are being used in a future time (surely that can’t be so!)...I finally began ignoring the dates and tried to hang onto the names—with about equal success.

The recording was so slow I increased the speed to 1.25

If you want to know why the modern world is the way it is, you’ll want to read tbos

“Turning’s Cathedral” is one of the most fascinating history books I’ve read or listen to. It’s not a conventional book but Dyson’s sense of the importance of this somewhat hidden (in lain sight) history fascination with his subject, and clarity of writing will draw you in.
The metaphor of cathedral is apt, since like the peasants, craftsmen and nobility in a medieval town we all now live and work in the shadow of what Gödel, Turning, Johnny and Klari von Neumann, and the others began constructing.

Where's the beef?

What did you like best about Turing's Cathedral? What did you like least?

The narrator is good.

What could George Dyson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Reduced the biographical information about everone in the book. Especially the pointless trivia associated with relatives, houses,cars, boats, roads, pets, etc etc. A concise bio of each of the major players would have been enough to give a background. I am a quarter of the way through the book and have not heard anything significant on the subject matter as of yet. I keep skipping chapters to keep from falling asleep. Too many authors fluff out there books with these boring and irrelevant facts all intermingled with the limited subject matter. I am usually asleep when what few informative paragraphs are read.

What does Arthur Morey bring to the story that you wouldn???t experience if you just read the book?

Makes me feel like something about this purchase had some value.

Could you see Turing's Cathedral being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Everyone under the sun in every country of the world. AND their mothers!

Any additional comments?

Classify it as a biography. Or biographies.

interesting historical report of IAS

About John vonNeuman and the historical development of computers and artificial intelligence at the Institute of Advanced Studies. Author weaves in much historical data in this well written story. despite title..little about Alan Turing

Tremendous

A tremendous walk through the foundations of our modern digital world. If you have av interest in how we got to a world with smart phones, Google, Facebook, and broadband Internet, this audiobook is well worth your time.