George Dyson (historian)

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George Dyson

George Bernard Dyson (born March 26, 1953 in Ithaca , New York ) is an American science and technology historian and non-fiction author.

Life

George Dyson was born in 1953 as the son of the mathematicians Freeman Dyson and Verena Huber-Dyson and as the grandson of the English composer George Dyson . His sister is Esther Dyson . At the age of sixteen he left home to live in a tree house on the coast of British Columbia . He devoted himself to the construction of Baidarkas , the traditional kayak of Unangan , and founded a company that manufactures Aleutian Kayak kayaks. Along with his book Baidarka the Kayak , this led to the resurgence of the Baidarka kayaks.

George Dyson's relationship with his father is portrayed in the book The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower .

He is the author of several non-fiction books on topics related to the history of science and the philosophy of technology . In the book Darwin Among the Machines he put forward the thesis that the Internet is a conscious living being. For his book about the Orion project , in which his father developed a nuclear-powered spaceship, he managed to collect so much material that NASA approached him to buy almost 2,000 pages of copies of works that were no longer in their own archive were found.

Today he works as a consultant and philosopher in the field of digital technologies. He gives lectures, for example, at the Institute for Advanced Study or at the TED conference .

Works

  • Baidarka the Kayak. Alaska Northwest Books, 1986, ISBN 0-88240-315-X .
    • German: Fascination Baidarka: History, development and rebirth of the Alëuten kayak. Tourist book, Hannover 1989, ISBN 3-924415-11-0 .
  • Darwin Among the Machines. Allan Lane Science, 1998, ISBN 0-7382-0030-1 .
    • German: Darwin in the realm of machines: the evolution of global intelligence. Springer, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-211-83588-1 .
  • Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965. Allan Lane Science, 2002, ISBN 0-7139-9267-0 .
  • Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe . Pantheon, New York City 2012, ISBN 978-0-375-42277-5 .

literature

  • Kenneth Brower: The Starship and the Canoe. Rinehart and Winston, New York 1978, ISBN 0-03-039196-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His mother's obituary , accessed on May 9, 2018
  2. ↑ Machines are part of nature in FAZ of October 11, 2014, page 18


personal data
SURNAME Dyson, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dyson, George Bernard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American futurologist and non-fiction author
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Ithaca (New York)