Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Code Breaker: A Rare Conversation with Legendary Tech Historian Charles Petzold ✨

Transcript

Code Breaker: A Rare Conversation with Legendary Tech Historian Charles Petzold ✨ · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome it change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
0:05
Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Speaker 2: Let's get into.
0:07
Speaker 3: It all the change Makers. Tom McGrath here, I'm flying
0:13
Speaker 3: solo today as Tim can't be with us this afternoon,
0:17
Speaker 3: and I want to say a few words about this episode.
0:19
Speaker 4: You know, it's a real it's a real.
0:21
Speaker 3: Privilege to be able to co host The Deck Show.
0:25
Speaker 3: I'm really one of the most enjoyable things I know
0:28
Speaker 3: Tim and myself and a lot of people involved in
0:30
Speaker 3: the show do as part of our work lives. But
0:34
Speaker 3: I say this without exaggeration, but I've never been more
0:39
Speaker 3: excited to welcome today's guest, or to welcome any guest
0:45
Speaker 3: to the show as I am today.
0:46
Speaker 4: And I'm going to say a quick word about why
0:50
Speaker 4: that is.
0:51
Speaker 3: Even though the guest in question, Charles Petsold, has already
0:54
Speaker 3: heard this story, I'm going to subject him to it
0:56
Speaker 3: again before I give him a welcome. So it was
0:59
Speaker 3: about sort of twelve year ago, eleven years ago when
1:01
Speaker 3: I started my career in technology, and I was sharply
1:06
Speaker 3: aware having come out of the publishing industry and having
1:09
Speaker 3: come out of a sort of a pre career in
1:12
Speaker 3: writing for various publications and such like I was sharply
1:15
Speaker 3: aware that my knowledge of technology, my understanding of it,
1:19
Speaker 3: was pretty limited, and I was given a recommendation to
1:24
Speaker 3: have a look at Charles's book Code, The Hidden Language
1:27
Speaker 3: of Computer Hardware and Software. And if you've read Code,
1:31
Speaker 3: or if you haven't, it basically walks for reader through
1:37
Speaker 3: the development of computers all the way back to the
1:40
Speaker 3: sort of the harnessing of electricity itself, and step by
1:44
Speaker 3: step by step, and in such a sort of clear
1:48
Speaker 3: and compelling way, not only in terms of the writing,
1:50
Speaker 3: but the illustrations which are used to make it tangible
1:54
Speaker 3: and to make it real that I found myself, you know,
2:00
Speaker 3: doably well brought up to date, the gaps in my
2:02
Speaker 3: Awaren has reasonably well filled, and first and foremost with
2:06
Speaker 3: a sense that I'd really encountered a really, a really special,
2:10
Speaker 3: a special author, and I feel that way to this day.
2:13
Speaker 3: So I'm absolutely delighted Charles to have you on the show.
2:17
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this, and thanks
2:19
Speaker 3: for your wonderful right than you.
2:20
Speaker 2: It sounds like you're the ideal reader of Code. We
2:25
Speaker 2: always when we're writing a book, we think about an
2:28
Speaker 2: ideal reader. Who that person is and try to try
2:31
Speaker 2: to write directly for that person. I didn't have you
2:35
Speaker 2: personally in mind, but you seem to fit the bill.
2:40
Speaker 4: We spoke.
2:41
Speaker 3: We spoke a few weeks ago, of course, about doing
2:43
Speaker 3: this show, and you mentioned that you did have an
2:45
Speaker 3: ideal reader in mind who might be very analogous, but
2:48
Speaker 3: wasn't exact to me, which was you and your fellow
2:51
Speaker 3: colleagues encodings mothers. Yes, I believe you specifically a textbook
2:58
Speaker 3: could allow them to to know what it was you
3:01
Speaker 3: did for a living, right.
3:02
Speaker 2: Just that none of our parents seem to understand what
3:06
Speaker 2: programming was all about, and that's what I wanted to convey, uh.
3:10
Speaker 2: And also I knew that a lot of people, a
3:13
Speaker 2: lot of my colleagues in the computer industry, UH, did
3:20
Speaker 2: not have this background of digital logic design. So even
3:25
Speaker 2: though they were completely competent programmers, they did not understand
3:29
Speaker 2: really what was going on below the surface when a
3:33
Speaker 2: computer added two numbers together, for example. So they seemed
3:37
Speaker 2: to benefit also from from the book. None of our
3:41
Speaker 2: none of our as far as I know, none of
3:42
Speaker 2: our parents actually read the book, so my mother certainly didn't.
3:48
Speaker 3: I'm sure some parents have read the book. Since maybe
3:52
Speaker 3: to catch up with and children's career. But will tell
3:56
Speaker 3: me tell me about your own, your own road to
3:59
Speaker 3: becoming a technology writer primarily, and what brought you to
4:03
Speaker 3: that point.
4:04
Speaker 2: Well, I attended one of the first school, I believe
4:07
Speaker 2: it was the first school, first college, to require all
4:11
Speaker 2: freshmen to take a programming course. And this is an engineer,
4:14
Speaker 2: a small engineering and science school called Stevens Institute of Technology.
4:18
Speaker 2: It's located in Hoboken, New Jersey, not far from where
4:21
Speaker 2: I grew up. And so freshman year in nineteen seventy one,
4:26
Speaker 2: I had my first programming course there in Fortrand, and
4:30
Speaker 2: I didn't like programming. It was with punch cards, and
4:35
Speaker 2: you submitted the cards to the guru behind the desk,
4:38
Speaker 2: and he flipped through them and see that there are
4:40
Speaker 2: a bunch of eras, but he put them through anyway,
4:42
Speaker 2: and you get all this paperback. It was not a
4:45
Speaker 2: very pleasant experience. But after I graduated college, I had
4:51
Speaker 2: this interest in electronic music and I decided that I
4:57
Speaker 2: would try building letronic music instruments. And I didn't I
5:02
Speaker 2: had no idea how to do this, and I went
5:05
Speaker 2: to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore, which had a
5:08
Speaker 2: good technology section, and I found a couple of books
5:12
Speaker 2: on digital circuitry, and I had no formal background in that,
5:18
Speaker 2: and I started learning how to wire chips together, SEEMS
5:22
Speaker 2: chips and TTL chips. This was around late seventies, let's say,
5:28
Speaker 2: and gradually learned enough to build a couple electronic music
5:33
Speaker 2: synthesizers just for myself. I do not have I do
5:37
Speaker 2: not have an entrepreneur gene, so it was I did
5:41
Speaker 2: not conceive of this as something that I would actually
5:44
Speaker 2: sell and market, but I eventually ended up building a
5:49
Speaker 2: digital synthesizer, which is a synthesizer that generates sign curves
5:55
Speaker 2: digitally and then combines them into to make more complex
6:00
Speaker 2: sounds controlled by a Z eighty microprocessor. And so all
6:07
Speaker 2: the knowledge that went into this I learned basically from scratch.
6:11
Speaker 2: But by the time I finished it, I had a
6:14
Speaker 2: very good background in digital circuits, digital logic, and also
6:20
Speaker 2: microprocessors and also assembly language eight bit assembly language, and
6:28
Speaker 2: I knew later on i started writing for PC magazine
6:35
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four, I knew that a lot of
6:39
Speaker 2: people did not have this background, so I knew I
6:42
Speaker 2: had kind of a special knowledge of this stuff, and
6:49
Speaker 2: as early as maybe nineteen eighty six or so, I
6:54
Speaker 2: thought of this idea to write a book that would
6:57
Speaker 2: explain how a computer were starting from the basics, and
7:03
Speaker 2: that idea kicked around in my head for about ten
7:06
Speaker 2: years so until I finally started writing the book and
7:10
Speaker 2: went through a lot of ups and downs in my
7:13
Speaker 2: personal life between that time.
7:17
Speaker 3: Really well so much where I could pick up on,
7:20
Speaker 3: But you have led me to the next question I
7:23
Speaker 3: really wanted to ask, which is about your style, because
7:27
Speaker 3: it's difficult to describe what it's like to read your
7:31
Speaker 3: work because on one level, it, you know, it couldn't
7:35
Speaker 3: be so easily on the.
7:37
Speaker 4: Surface level, distinguished from a text brand. You know you are.
7:40
Speaker 3: You are explaining what things do and how they work
7:43
Speaker 3: in a very pragmatic way that's as clear as possible,
7:46
Speaker 3: and as I mentioned, you're using illustrations to convey that to.
7:50
Speaker 4: Convey that knowledge.
7:51
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, if you take someone like me, there's no way
7:54
Speaker 3: I could have waded through textbooks on this stuff.
7:57
Speaker 4: You know, and I'm interested in what you know. I
8:00
Speaker 4: guess what you think your.
8:01
Speaker 3: Style is and what distinguishes your approach from the even
8:06
Speaker 3: more kind of purely pragmatic approach. And with that, what
8:10
Speaker 3: writers have influenced you to reach that style to homework style.
8:16
Speaker 2: That's some question and one I also My career also
8:22
Speaker 2: included writing a bunch of programs on programming applications for
8:27
Speaker 2: Microsoft Windows, one of not the first book about how
8:30
Speaker 2: to write Windows apps, but one of the first, maybe
8:33
Speaker 2: the second, and a book I call Programming Windows, and
8:36
Speaker 2: it went through like six editions over the years. But
8:42
Speaker 2: specifically when writing that book, because I had learned Windows
8:46
Speaker 2: programming from based on very scanty documentation and a tutorial
8:51
Speaker 2: that somebody of Microsoft had put together, I was able
8:55
Speaker 2: to remember my pain in learning this stuff, in struggling
8:59
Speaker 2: through and finally getting to a point where I could
9:02
Speaker 2: get a Windows program actually on the screen. So remembering
9:07
Speaker 2: my pain was very helpful in kind of anticipating what
9:13
Speaker 2: questions the readers might ask. Somebody said when they were
9:18
Speaker 2: reading my book, they kept coming up with questions that
9:21
Speaker 2: I would like answer in the next paragraph, which is
9:23
Speaker 2: just great to hear that.
9:26
Speaker 4: But also.
9:29
Speaker 2: I particularly with something like code and that it is
9:39
Speaker 2: just technology, but I tried to impose a narrative on it,
9:46
Speaker 2: and I think narratives stories are important to This is
9:52
Speaker 2: very essential to the way that humans understand information. If
9:59
Speaker 2: it's delivered in the form of a story, it's more
10:03
Speaker 2: easily assimilable. Assimilable, for example, if you're reading a history.
10:11
Speaker 2: The historians do this all the time. History does not
10:15
Speaker 2: have an intrinsic narrative. It's just a bunch of events,
10:19
Speaker 2: some of which are random, some of which are colliding
10:22
Speaker 2: with each other, some of which are contradictory, and it
10:25
Speaker 2: is the historian's job to impose a narrative on those events,
10:34
Speaker 2: and sometimes that distorts the events, but it's the only
10:37
Speaker 2: way we can really assimilate this. When I was in college,
10:41
Speaker 2: one of the other things about the college that I
10:43
Speaker 2: went to is that they liked even though it was
10:47
Speaker 2: entirely science and engineering, they liked people to have a
10:50
Speaker 2: well rounded education, which means that we had four years
10:54
Speaker 2: of humanities courses. And one of these humanities courses was
10:57
Speaker 2: a history of science and history of mathematic Now I
11:02
Speaker 2: knew there was science, and I knew there was history,
11:04
Speaker 2: but I did not know there was such a field
11:06
Speaker 2: as history of science, and so this was a revelation
11:11
Speaker 2: that you could actually study what went on in the past.
11:15
Speaker 2: One of the books that we read was called I
11:18
Speaker 2: wrote this down Sleepwalkers by Arthur Cursler. It was published
11:22
Speaker 2: in the late fifties. But it's basically the story of
11:25
Speaker 2: Copernicus and Kepler and how these guys found out that
11:33
Speaker 2: instead of the universe circling around the Earth, we were
11:37
Speaker 2: the Earth was circling around This so very simple, but
11:40
Speaker 2: it was an essential shift in perspective. And Arthur Cursler
11:46
Speaker 2: is a historian as a social scientist, and so he
11:52
Speaker 2: was able to impose a great narrative on this, and
11:59
Speaker 2: so that it came a comprehensible story. Much later on,
12:03
Speaker 2: when I was first started writing programming books, there was
12:08
Speaker 2: a book by David Sobell called Longitude, and it was
12:16
Speaker 2: the subject sounds sounds horrifying. I mean, it's it's it's
12:20
Speaker 2: back back in the day several centuries ago. Ships could
12:25
Speaker 2: easily find their latitude, you know, their distance north or south.
12:30
Speaker 2: In the middle of the ocean, you observe Polaris, the
12:34
Speaker 2: North Star, and the angular distance from the horizon of
12:39
Speaker 2: the North Star was your latitude. Very easy. Longitude was
12:43
Speaker 2: extremely difficult because it relies upon what time it is,
12:51
Speaker 2: and so one hour because of the Earth's rotation. One
12:57
Speaker 2: hour of time is equivalent to fifteen degrees of longitude,
13:01
Speaker 2: which is a long distance eventually, So there were prizes
13:06
Speaker 2: awarded for somebody who could figure out how to determine
13:10
Speaker 2: longitude at sea. And the answer was to have a
13:13
Speaker 2: really accurate clock, and a clock that would not be
13:18
Speaker 2: affected by temperature or the bouncing waves or anything like that.
13:22
Speaker 2: And David Abell told this story is a wonderful book
13:26
Speaker 2: was published in nineteen eighty five called Longitude. So put
13:30
Speaker 2: a narrative on it and made it a fascinating story
13:34
Speaker 2: without any technical stuff, no math or anything like that.
13:38
Speaker 2: And so that book was really an inspiration to me
13:41
Speaker 2: that you could write a book about a technical subject
13:46
Speaker 2: but make it available to the common reader.
13:52
Speaker 3: Wonderful and off the custler, of course, most famous as
13:55
Speaker 3: a novelist.
13:55
Speaker 4: Right, yes, yeah, you know.
14:00
Speaker 3: So interested in you you're feeling about the importance of
14:07
Speaker 3: your readership or of the general public at large, having
14:11
Speaker 3: some sense of like clarity about the machinations behind the
14:17
Speaker 3: technology that dominates so many of our lives, right, I mean,
14:21
Speaker 3: do you look at it as something that you know
14:25
Speaker 3: there is a prevalent ignorance to it, right, Like you know,
14:29
Speaker 3: these things, our phones, et cetera may as well be
14:31
Speaker 3: magic to most people to the degree of understanding that
14:35
Speaker 3: most people have. And that's not to say that there's
14:37
Speaker 3: not plenty of people in laymen and lay women who
14:40
Speaker 3: do understand, who do make an effort, But for most
14:42
Speaker 3: of us it's beyond our comprehension. Yet these devices completely
14:47
Speaker 3: dictate to many degrees our existence. Do you think that
14:51
Speaker 3: disparity of understanding is a social danger? Do you think
14:55
Speaker 3: it's you know, do you feel compelled in some way
14:58
Speaker 3: to try and bridge that gap? Beyond is the pleasure
15:00
Speaker 3: of writing and creating books.
15:05
Speaker 5: I used to.
15:06
Speaker 2: Feel more strongly about this than I do now, back
15:11
Speaker 2: when I was when I was first working working with
15:22
Speaker 2: Back when I was first writing the books about programming
15:25
Speaker 2: for Windows, we wrote in C and c IS. Even
15:29
Speaker 2: though it's a high level language, it's considered a rather
15:31
Speaker 2: low level high level language because you're dealing with things
15:34
Speaker 2: like pointers and you can access memory directly and stuff
15:38
Speaker 2: like that. And people who had a background programmers who
15:43
Speaker 2: had a background and assembly language understood pointers right away
15:47
Speaker 2: because that's all you do in assembly language. You work
15:49
Speaker 2: with pointers and memory locations. So but people who did
15:52
Speaker 2: not c was could be a real mystery. So in
15:59
Speaker 2: that sense, it's I always thought that programmers, in learning programming,
16:04
Speaker 2: you should start at the beginning. You should learn an
16:06
Speaker 2: assembly language and then work your way up to the
16:09
Speaker 2: high level languages so you knew so at least you
16:13
Speaker 2: had a little feel for what the high level languages
16:16
Speaker 2: were doing. I don't think that's practical anymore. I think
16:23
Speaker 2: many high level languages are so complex that you need
16:26
Speaker 2: to devote all your time to them. Uh. In the
16:32
Speaker 2: past several years, I've been programming mostly in JavaScript, and
16:36
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's a big language, particularly when you
16:39
Speaker 2: when you bring in all this stuff you can do
16:42
Speaker 2: in the browser, and then there's there's graphics APIs and
16:47
Speaker 2: web g L, three D, A p I and and
16:50
Speaker 2: uh so there's enough to learn without going all the
16:54
Speaker 2: way back to the beginning. As for as for the
17:00
Speaker 2: the common user, the non programmer user, I I I
17:05
Speaker 2: don't know. I I certainly wanted people to understand what
17:13
Speaker 2: the computer was doing at very basic levels because I
17:17
Speaker 2: think it's fascinating. I think it's it's very cool how
17:21
Speaker 2: you can uh essentially take little switches in the form
17:25
Speaker 2: of transistors and wire them up to do logic and
17:28
Speaker 2: make more complex circuits out of them and eventually build
17:32
Speaker 2: a computer. I think that's very cool, and I think
17:37
Speaker 2: inquisitive uh people would be interested in learning that. But
17:42
Speaker 2: is it essential it's at this point I don't know.
17:49
Speaker 2: So that's that is my that is my I.
17:52
Speaker 3: Mean the ship may have sailed as well, though, I
17:55
Speaker 3: mean it would take quite quite the course to update
17:59
Speaker 3: so many billions of affected and so profoundly by technology. Yeah,
18:03
Speaker 3: you know, it does anticipate a question I had for
18:05
Speaker 3: you for later in a discussion, but I might insert now,
18:08
Speaker 3: which is you know we see with AI, you know, natural.
18:13
Speaker 4: Language models, et cetera. Even knowledge of coding.
18:16
Speaker 3: As you describe, which can be so kind of such
18:19
Speaker 3: a pyramid of aware, Such a pyramid structure of awareness
18:23
Speaker 3: becomes even for professional code is feasibly in the near
18:26
Speaker 3: future somewhat redundant, and in general then we're we're we
18:31
Speaker 3: almost all of us. Even then professional technologists are operating
18:36
Speaker 3: with technology that we is even unfathomable or unreachable. And
18:41
Speaker 3: I wonder if you had specific concerns about that, or
18:45
Speaker 3: about AI in general, or you know, does it become
18:48
Speaker 3: maybe even more important to at least have a general
18:50
Speaker 3: awareness of what the rudiments of computer hardware and software
18:53
Speaker 3: are founded.
18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one of one of my one of the
18:58
Speaker 2: ways I thought about code was that it demystified the
19:02
Speaker 2: computer my book Code, that it demystified what the computer does,
19:07
Speaker 2: because I don't like people thinking that technology is magic,
19:14
Speaker 2: even though it appears that way sometimes. With a few
19:20
Speaker 2: years ago, as I was approaching my sixty fifth birthday
19:24
Speaker 2: and wondering if I was going to retire or not,
19:27
Speaker 2: I realized that if I was to continue in the
19:31
Speaker 2: program in the computer industry, I would either have to
19:36
Speaker 2: go deeply into machine learning or the other option I
19:40
Speaker 2: thought of was quantum computing learn about how to write
19:45
Speaker 2: programs for a quantum computer or machine learning. And I
19:48
Speaker 2: wasn't really enthusiastic about either of these courses, and I
19:54
Speaker 2: decided that I would let younger people with sharper minds
20:01
Speaker 2: attack these subjects and I would just kind of like
20:04
Speaker 2: fade away and do my own thing. So I've had
20:12
Speaker 2: some reactions to AI that are mostly emotional. When we
20:24
Speaker 2: first started seeing poetry and prose that were created by
20:32
Speaker 2: chatbots that look like written by a human I had
20:38
Speaker 2: a gut revulsion about it, that this putting things into
20:47
Speaker 2: words is a very human activity, and that we were
20:52
Speaker 2: creating a program that could mimic that by searching through
20:59
Speaker 2: the a wealth of of pre existing sentences and how
21:03
Speaker 2: they were constructed and where a particular a sentence that
21:07
Speaker 2: started in a particular way, where that sentence would end
21:09
Speaker 2: up with I. I I revulsion is the primary reaction
21:16
Speaker 2: that I had. Uh because because the the sentences were
21:24
Speaker 2: being constructed a without any understanding of what the sentence
21:28
Speaker 2: meant and and uh B without the shared experiences that
21:34
Speaker 2: humans have when we converse with each other. I know
21:41
Speaker 2: that it is possible now that a UH to have
21:45
Speaker 2: AI program write a novel or a short let's say
21:49
Speaker 2: a short story, and to have it seemed completely plausible
21:52
Speaker 2: that you might mistake it for something that a human
21:56
Speaker 2: being wrote. Okay, do I want to read such a story?
22:02
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think so because when I read fiction,
22:06
Speaker 2: When I read stories, I feel as if another human
22:09
Speaker 2: being is communicating with me through this medium. Who is
22:14
Speaker 2: communicating with me? When I if I read a story
22:17
Speaker 2: or or a poem constructed by an AI program, would
22:24
Speaker 2: you read I'll take an extreme example, say there's a
22:28
Speaker 2: story with a sex scene in it, would you believe?
22:32
Speaker 2: Would you believe that sex scene? It just would not.
22:38
Speaker 2: Uh be. It might sound plausible because it's based on
22:44
Speaker 2: perhaps millions of sex scenes that have been written throughout fiction.
22:47
Speaker 2: It's it's based on those, it's drawing, it's drawing information
22:51
Speaker 2: from those, but it's it's not conveying an authentic experience.
22:58
Speaker 2: And there was somebody I'm on Facebook a lot, and
23:03
Speaker 2: somebody posted something about AI music, which like, really, I
23:09
Speaker 2: had a really bad reaction to that, and so I
23:12
Speaker 2: wrote a blog entry kennon AI composed composed music, which
23:17
Speaker 2: was just a series of questions. But something composing music
23:22
Speaker 2: that has not had the experience of dancing, is that plausible?
23:27
Speaker 2: I don't think so. You know, human beings we drum on,
23:33
Speaker 2: we drum on our bodies and we sing and stuff
23:36
Speaker 2: like that, and AI has never had that experience. Because
23:39
Speaker 2: so canon AI composed music, Well, it can look at
23:42
Speaker 2: all the music that's be composed and like find structures
23:45
Speaker 2: in those, in the melodies and the harmonies and put
23:49
Speaker 2: them together in novel ways. But I because that is
23:56
Speaker 2: not coming from a human experience. I don't see why
24:03
Speaker 2: I should even listen to it. However, however, let's take
24:09
Speaker 2: another Let's take another leap. Say that we create an
24:18
Speaker 2: AI that we that convinces us that it is sentient
24:27
Speaker 2: and can actually put together unique sentences in the same
24:32
Speaker 2: way that humans do, or composed music in the same
24:35
Speaker 2: way that humans do. That's even worse, because if you
24:41
Speaker 2: have created a sentient being in software, it's like birthing
24:48
Speaker 2: a child. You have responsibility for that. Would you want
24:52
Speaker 2: would you unplug a uh a computer running sentient software? Ah,
25:00
Speaker 2: that's that's an extreme moral problem, and so uh yeah,
25:08
Speaker 2: my nervous where we're headed with this? You sure, am?
25:13
Speaker 2: I don't think we can think lightly about software that
25:17
Speaker 2: has become sentient if such a thing happens. I I'm not.
25:23
Speaker 2: I don't believe that humans are special, that are the
25:29
Speaker 2: the workings of of us are anything but mechanistic, and
25:35
Speaker 2: so I don't see a real intrinsic obstacle to building
25:42
Speaker 2: something that's sentient. But it's an awful lot of responsibility
25:48
Speaker 2: and that scares me. Fortunately, you know, I'm I'm like
25:52
Speaker 2: in my early seventies at this point, so maybe I
25:55
Speaker 2: won't have to actually experience that as I say. As
25:59
Speaker 2: I said, I you know, when I retired, it was like,
26:02
Speaker 2: I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to
26:03
Speaker 2: leave the rest of the computer industry to young people.
26:06
Speaker 2: You know, this is there who can think about this
26:09
Speaker 2: stuff in a fresh way. So so I become an
26:13
Speaker 2: old conjure, who's who doesn't like the new stuff? All
26:18
Speaker 2: this all this aive star, you know. But does that
26:25
Speaker 2: answer your question?
26:28
Speaker 3: It certainly does the very reasonable, reasonable concerns but that
26:33
Speaker 3: many many of us have at any age. I would say, now,
26:38
Speaker 3: in fact, you know, you kind of teed me up
26:40
Speaker 3: rather well as well, because I think your focus is
26:44
Speaker 3: there's always been a kind of historical focus, right, you know,
26:47
Speaker 3: the narrative of the evolution of this technological paradigm. And
26:54
Speaker 3: you've described your book vi annotated touring as as the
26:57
Speaker 3: work you're proudest of that sort of somewhat less accessible
27:01
Speaker 3: or immediately familiar to people of them this theme of code.
27:04
Speaker 3: So I would love, however, to discuss this and what
27:07
Speaker 3: So First of all, what you do in that book
27:10
Speaker 3: is you explore Turing's famous paper on computability, and I
27:15
Speaker 3: wonder if you could maybe frame what that was and
27:17
Speaker 3: what its legacy and significance was to you that engaged you.
27:21
Speaker 2: So first, I first encountered Touring's paper, which he wrote
27:26
Speaker 2: basically as a graduate student in when he was twenty
27:29
Speaker 2: four years old in nineteen thirty six. When I was
27:33
Speaker 2: researching the first edition of Code, I was going back
27:37
Speaker 2: and trying to look at some of the major historical
27:40
Speaker 2: documents of the computer industry, and Touring's paper was certainly
27:45
Speaker 2: one of them. And when I first looked at that paper,
27:49
Speaker 2: it was incomprehensible to me. It used a lot of
27:52
Speaker 2: weird Gothic lettering, and there was some it referred to
27:56
Speaker 2: things I was not familiar with, some mathematical stuff that
28:01
Speaker 2: I become rusty in that I hadn't thought about for
28:03
Speaker 2: a long time. And uh, I, I you went through
28:09
Speaker 2: a few pages of Touring's paper and said, thought to myself, somebody,
28:14
Speaker 2: this this paper is important historically, and somebody should really
28:18
Speaker 2: write a book explaining what this paper is all about.
28:20
Speaker 2: And once I have that idea in my mind, somebody
28:23
Speaker 2: should write a book that I'm a goner. It's it's
28:26
Speaker 2: uh And uh, I realized this would be a hard
28:30
Speaker 2: book to write because I would need to understand the
28:35
Speaker 2: way I wanted to do it, and the way it
28:36
Speaker 2: turned out was that I take touring's paper and I
28:41
Speaker 2: cut it up into individual sentences, sometimes partial sentences, and
28:48
Speaker 2: annotate it all this other the book, my book, The
28:52
Speaker 2: Annotated Touring, has tourings complete paper with my discussion of
28:58
Speaker 2: it and my explanation of what touring is touring is doing,
29:02
Speaker 2: and like three pages of historical slash mathematical background leading
29:10
Speaker 2: up to it, but also interweaving touring's own life in
29:16
Speaker 2: with my analysis of the papers. So I was very
29:21
Speaker 2: happy with the way that book turned out, particularly since
29:26
Speaker 2: it was a struggle to write. And but what the
29:33
Speaker 2: paper is about touring? There was this problem in mathematical
29:37
Speaker 2: logic of first order mathematical logic, which is the simplest
29:43
Speaker 2: type of logic using ads and ores and knots and stuff.
29:46
Speaker 2: If you have a statement in mathematical logic, the German
29:51
Speaker 2: mathematician David Hilbert posed this problem, can you determine whether
29:57
Speaker 2: this statement is provable or not? Uh? And this was
30:01
Speaker 2: known as the enshidence problem the decision problem, and it
30:06
Speaker 2: was an open problem and UH, Touring and another mathematician
30:11
Speaker 2: we're working on this at the same time and what
30:16
Speaker 2: The way that Touring decided to approach this problem was
30:19
Speaker 2: by building an imaginary computer, which is now called the
30:24
Speaker 2: turing machine. A touring obviously did not call it that,
30:28
Speaker 2: and uh so so, and then to express these statements
30:33
Speaker 2: in mathematical logic in this within this computer, and to
30:38
Speaker 2: write a program that would interpret this. And he saw this,
30:42
Speaker 2: determined that the ensidence problem was unsolvable. And and basically
30:48
Speaker 2: it's it's that if you have a faulty program, you
30:56
Speaker 2: can't write a program to figure out what the problem
31:00
Speaker 2: is with that program.
31:03
Speaker 4: Who the.
31:06
Speaker 2: Essentially comes down to who can debug the debugging program?
31:11
Speaker 2: So what tourings what Tourings paper established besides this answering
31:17
Speaker 2: this problem in mathematical logic, and the negative is that
31:21
Speaker 2: we had a much better understanding of what computing was.
31:28
Speaker 2: We say now that certain languages are touring complete, which
31:32
Speaker 2: means that they are equivalent to a touring machine, and
31:35
Speaker 2: certain languages are not. H Notoriously, HTML is not touring complete.
31:43
Speaker 2: It is not a programming language. There are certain things
31:46
Speaker 2: you can't do with it. But any language or machine
31:50
Speaker 2: that is touring complete are basically equivalent, meaning that they
31:56
Speaker 2: can solve the same problems. That it wasn't immediately obvious
32:01
Speaker 2: to people developing the first computers that you could have
32:05
Speaker 2: a general purpose computer. There's a famous statement by I
32:11
Speaker 2: want to say, Howard Aiken, I'm not sure saying that
32:17
Speaker 2: we'd have we'd have certain computers for science and certain
32:21
Speaker 2: programs for business, certain group computers for business, and it's
32:25
Speaker 2: it's unlikely that these would ever be the same computer.
32:28
Speaker 2: But of course we know that's not the case.
32:30
Speaker 4: You know, we have.
32:32
Speaker 2: Different types of Uh, some computers can well, all computers
32:39
Speaker 2: now can make sound and show pictures and show graphics
32:41
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So but the actual computing, what's
32:45
Speaker 2: going on inside the computer, all computers are basically equivalent.
32:49
Speaker 2: So that was an important outcome of Touring's paper. Another
32:53
Speaker 2: important outcome was that, like I alluded to before, you
32:58
Speaker 2: can't write a depug program. You cannot know whether your
33:04
Speaker 2: programs are working correctly or not ultimately, and that is, uh,
33:10
Speaker 2: that is scary because we're using programs in so much stuff,
33:17
Speaker 2: you know, so there so the self driving cars, you
33:23
Speaker 2: can't really know if that software is working correctly, and
33:29
Speaker 2: that's basically a problem. Of course, it goes back to
33:35
Speaker 2: humans doing their own logic, their own computation. You can't
33:39
Speaker 2: determine if something that you're doing is correct or not.
33:43
Speaker 2: There's so there's there, there's this intrinsic uncertainty throughout not
33:49
Speaker 2: only human reasoning, but computer reasoning as well.
33:54
Speaker 4: M M.
33:55
Speaker 3: I'd like to pick up a map, because you know
33:57
Speaker 3: what when you when you when when we look at
33:59
Speaker 3: the evolution of technology, we it's it's a lie to
34:05
Speaker 3: the evolution of commerce, right Like, it's often commercially stimulated,
34:11
Speaker 3: and it's actually quite difficult for us to imagine, if
34:13
Speaker 3: you know, you could have some sort of hypothetical PUSI
34:16
Speaker 3: communistic society, how technological development would have occurred at what
34:22
Speaker 3: rate or at what pace?
34:23
Speaker 2: Or you know, there's also an engineering stream as well.
34:29
Speaker 2: The first computers were developed mostly by engineers wanting to
34:33
Speaker 2: do engineering problems. But yeah, the the commerce was extremely
34:39
Speaker 2: important in later development, Yeah.
34:44
Speaker 3: Without a doubt, right down to you know, in terms
34:46
Speaker 3: of directing and the flow of the innovation and also
34:50
Speaker 3: the speed of innovation. Right so you can just self
34:53
Speaker 3: driving cars, which you know wouldn't necessarily be a focus
34:58
Speaker 3: outside of the commercial opportunities inspired by you know, an
35:02
Speaker 3: entrepreneur and you describe yourself as lacking entrepreneurial in yourself
35:07
Speaker 3: or you know, having that having that kind of you.
35:10
Speaker 3: So I'm just I'm just interested in a little bit
35:12
Speaker 3: of a vague question, but I'm interested in your general
35:15
Speaker 3: reflections on the role of what is commonly called capitalism
35:20
Speaker 3: in the development of technology. And as you've just kind
35:23
Speaker 3: of I feel alluded to the potential the potential dangers
35:27
Speaker 3: that come from a kind of external agency that directs
35:34
Speaker 3: and accelerates development of technology, which is the commercial factor.
35:39
Speaker 4: You know, what are your reflections on that.
35:42
Speaker 2: This is not something I've I've really thought of for family,
35:45
Speaker 2: But like I mentioned a little earlier, I'm on Facebook
35:51
Speaker 2: mostly because a lot of my older friends in the
35:54
Speaker 2: computer industry are on Facebook, and some personal friends as
35:58
Speaker 2: well around Facebook, and and I'm on Facebook every day.
36:02
Speaker 2: Basically I post about politics. I post about books I read.
36:09
Speaker 2: I post about movies i've seen. I post about concerts
36:12
Speaker 2: i've seen. I post about TV series that I like.
36:18
Speaker 2: And I used to a few years ago get into
36:23
Speaker 2: a lot of political arguments on Facebook the I have
36:30
Speaker 2: that has not been the case in recent years because
36:34
Speaker 2: most of the people who abhor my politics have befriended me,
36:38
Speaker 2: so I'm alone in a in a in a bubble.
36:46
Speaker 2: I I have no experience with things like TikTok or Instagram,
36:51
Speaker 2: but the idea that people are getting a lot of
36:54
Speaker 2: their information through these little videos on TikTok is kind
36:58
Speaker 2: of weird. The idea that Instagram or is really screwing
37:03
Speaker 2: with the heads of adolescents, particularly adolescent girls, thinking that
37:09
Speaker 2: they are inadequate to in terms of what they're seeing online.
37:16
Speaker 2: All this is extremely distressing. I grew up during the
37:23
Speaker 2: time of the Vietnam War, so I know that America
37:27
Speaker 2: has been divided before, but we all knew at that time.
37:35
Speaker 2: We all had a basic sense of reality, and we
37:38
Speaker 2: were all watching the same news programs, and now we're not.
37:46
Speaker 2: What was the question again, I've gotten.
37:49
Speaker 4: On this.
37:53
Speaker 3: Commercial motives behind technological development, and I think you kind
37:57
Speaker 3: of yeah, very interesting.
38:01
Speaker 4: It.
38:02
Speaker 3: Which is the the commercial motive for placing people in
38:08
Speaker 3: their algorithmic bubbles?
38:10
Speaker 4: Right?
38:10
Speaker 3: That's you know, that's that's that's food technology.
38:14
Speaker 4: But that has quite a kind of effect.
38:17
Speaker 2: I don't know who came up with this observation, but
38:19
Speaker 2: it is that if if you are not paying for
38:22
Speaker 2: something such as Facebook, or Twitter. Uh, then you are
38:27
Speaker 2: the product.
38:28
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, yes, and uh due to due to stuff
38:35
Speaker 6: that I've posted, I get a lot of targeted ads
38:42
Speaker 6: about concerts of classical music, which is.
38:48
Speaker 2: The algorithm is working to target these ads to me.
38:51
Speaker 2: Of course, many of them are located in states that
38:53
Speaker 2: I don't go to. The algorithm is not smart enough
38:57
Speaker 2: to know that if they're If it's advertising a live
39:00
Speaker 2: concert on Facebook, it's preferable that it be in the
39:04
Speaker 2: city where you live. The AAGORITHM doesn't.
39:09
Speaker 5: Get spread your nets sometimes advertising as many of my
39:15
Speaker 5: colleagues you're testified to, you know, but in general try,
39:20
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, kind of touches upon what you
39:23
Speaker 5: were just saying. You know, clearly, following your career as
39:26
Speaker 5: a writer, accessibility is something important to You're not only
39:29
Speaker 5: in a notion of making knowledge accessible in so far
39:33
Speaker 5: as it's being clear, but in terms of making your
39:36
Speaker 5: your work accessible to as many people as possible. Know,
39:39
Speaker 5: like with the second edition of Code, people could enjoy
39:42
Speaker 5: it online as.
39:43
Speaker 4: Well as as well as in book form free of charge.
39:46
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, and talk to me about that motive,
39:51
Speaker 3: and I think your current project that you were.
39:53
Speaker 4: Describing a few weeks ago.
39:55
Speaker 3: Is you're you're you're leaving the book behind, You're leaving
39:58
Speaker 3: the publishing industry behind.
39:59
Speaker 4: You're going straight to the people.
40:02
Speaker 2: Okay, this is this is a topic that I liked
40:06
Speaker 2: this to talk about. When I wrote the first edition
40:09
Speaker 2: of Code, I had this problem of presenting circuits in
40:15
Speaker 2: on the page printed page, and we did a lot
40:18
Speaker 2: of diagrams. There was more diagrams in that first edition
40:23
Speaker 2: of Code than I think any other book that Microsoft
40:25
Speaker 2: Press had had done ever, and we had a we
40:29
Speaker 2: had a professional illustrator doing them. I would sketch them
40:31
Speaker 2: out on paper and but one of the things I
40:35
Speaker 2: wanted to do in the circuits was to show what
40:39
Speaker 2: wires electricity was flowing in. So I wanted to make
40:42
Speaker 2: these wires read. And because that added another color, the
40:46
Speaker 2: publisher was like, oh, it's going to cost a little
40:48
Speaker 2: more money, and could we do shaded shaded? Maybe maybe
40:53
Speaker 2: not red? And no, no, red means electricity is It's
40:58
Speaker 2: a very intuitive So we got we got I got
41:02
Speaker 2: that read. Otherwise I would have been very unhappy. But still,
41:08
Speaker 2: you require multiple diagrams for for something. If you have
41:13
Speaker 2: just a simple logic, git you have four different cases.
41:18
Speaker 2: So I wanted so so the diagrams be basically repeated
41:21
Speaker 2: four times with different red colorings and particularly and then
41:26
Speaker 2: when you get into flip flops, you have to have
41:30
Speaker 2: this diagram, the same diagram over and over again showing
41:34
Speaker 2: the different states. And when I came when it came
41:38
Speaker 2: time to what to write the second edition, and it
41:43
Speaker 2: was mostly because the book was considered a perennial, an
41:48
Speaker 2: evergreen book they say in the in the publishing industry,
41:51
Speaker 2: of something that would not age, unlike all the programming
41:55
Speaker 2: Windows books that I've written that'd become obsolete. But still
41:58
Speaker 2: there was some stuff there, that stuff in there that
42:02
Speaker 2: hadn't that aged. Well, so we want to do a
42:06
Speaker 2: second edition. Uh, And it was like over twenty years later.
42:12
Speaker 2: But this time I wanted to have a website, a
42:16
Speaker 2: companion website, so that you could actually go on this
42:20
Speaker 2: website and play around with logic gates and flip flops
42:25
Speaker 2: and stuff like that and adders, and it's all interactive graphics.
42:31
Speaker 2: It's all graphics using the HTML five canvas written in JavaScript,
42:37
Speaker 2: and it's the you have. The website is called code
42:40
Speaker 2: Hidden Language dot com and it's no paywalls no ads,
42:46
Speaker 2: no pop ups of stuff, no cookies. It doesn't ask
42:51
Speaker 2: you for cookies because it doesn't keep cookies, you know,
42:54
Speaker 2: and I don't track the users. It's it's like it's
42:59
Speaker 2: it's as as as free as any as I don't
43:04
Speaker 2: know what. Wikipedia is also like that with no ads
43:08
Speaker 2: and no pop ups and no pay wall and no
43:11
Speaker 2: no cookies, but not very other than that, not many
43:16
Speaker 2: other websites. So anyway, so this this, I built this website,
43:21
Speaker 2: and I had always been a desk type programming guy
43:25
Speaker 2: and then a mobile programming guy. So I had done
43:28
Speaker 2: up until that time very little JavaScript programming. So it
43:31
Speaker 2: was just immersing myself in JavaScript. The the Canvas two
43:37
Speaker 2: D programming language was very similar to stuff I encountered before,
43:41
Speaker 2: so so that was no biggie. So and I'm very
43:44
Speaker 2: proud of this website. I mean, you can go on
43:46
Speaker 2: this website and play around with logic ags, you can
43:48
Speaker 2: play around with flip flops, you can play around with adders,
43:50
Speaker 2: and eventually you can play around with with a simulation
43:55
Speaker 2: of a real computer. And uh, I hope that between
44:04
Speaker 2: each of the diagrams there's a little explanation for each
44:07
Speaker 2: of the interactive of graphics, but you know, there's the
44:13
Speaker 2: shows to cover the book and where you can buy
44:15
Speaker 2: the book and stuff. That's the only real ad on
44:17
Speaker 2: the on the website. So I hope people go to
44:20
Speaker 2: this website and kind of play around and say, oh,
44:23
Speaker 2: I'd like to learn more about it. But as I
44:27
Speaker 2: was doing that website, it was like, why should there
44:32
Speaker 2: be a book and a website? And you're reading the
44:35
Speaker 2: book and you want to learn go learn more about this,
44:38
Speaker 2: and you go to the website, and even if you're
44:40
Speaker 2: reading an e book, the e book is not going
44:43
Speaker 2: to have the interactive graphics. And it would be great
44:46
Speaker 2: if it did, but it doesn't. The technology is a
44:51
Speaker 2: little behind in that way. So and then I realized, damn,
44:56
Speaker 2: if I didn't care about making money, I could do
45:01
Speaker 2: I could have done that entire book on the website.
45:04
Speaker 2: You know, people could be read and integrate the graphics
45:06
Speaker 2: write in with the book. Of course, my publisher wouldn't
45:11
Speaker 2: like that at all. I mean, the publisher basically owns
45:13
Speaker 2: the rights even though I'm the copyright owner that the
45:17
Speaker 2: publisher is licensed to has the sole license to create
45:22
Speaker 2: and distribute the book. So I could not do that
45:24
Speaker 2: on my own. I could not put that book on
45:26
Speaker 2: put Code on a website. So while I was researching
45:31
Speaker 2: the first edition of Code, I got interested in what's
45:35
Speaker 2: called the prehistory of computing. Computers. The first computers were
45:42
Speaker 2: really built at let's say late thirties early forties, what
45:46
Speaker 2: we recognize as computers, and they were first made out
45:52
Speaker 2: of out of telegraph relays and or telephone relays, and
45:56
Speaker 2: then they were made out of vacuum tubes and then
45:57
Speaker 2: transistors in ices. But they started out doing the logic
46:03
Speaker 2: gates and flip flops that we know. But anything prior
46:06
Speaker 2: to that is the prehistory of computing. I categorize Alan
46:12
Speaker 2: Touring as part of the prehistory of computing. At least
46:15
Speaker 2: his paper eventually got into working on real computers because
46:21
Speaker 2: he didn't have any real computer in mind to when
46:24
Speaker 2: he created this imaginary thing. But Charles Babbage, even though
46:30
Speaker 2: what he conceived of was would have been Touring complete,
46:36
Speaker 2: and it would have been equivalent to a modern day
46:40
Speaker 2: computer computer in terms of what it could processing. I
46:44
Speaker 2: could do. Of course, it would have been very slow,
46:46
Speaker 2: but it could do that same type of processing. It
46:48
Speaker 2: would have been Touring complete. So but Charles Babbage is
46:52
Speaker 2: prehistory there are. I got interested in this your card loom,
46:58
Speaker 2: which used punched cardboard to create patterns in silk weaving,
47:04
Speaker 2: and that was an inspiration for Babbage of having punch cards.
47:10
Speaker 2: I got interested in analog computers. There's this whole area
47:17
Speaker 2: of analog computers that is really crazy. In the nineteen twenties,
47:24
Speaker 2: there was this thing built called the differential analyzer which
47:27
Speaker 2: could solve differential equations using a bunch of spinning discs
47:32
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. I did a talk about this
47:35
Speaker 2: that's on The talk is on my website, the video
47:38
Speaker 2: section of my website Charlespenzel dot com. There was a
47:43
Speaker 2: tied predicting machine, which is basically a special purpose analog computer,
47:48
Speaker 2: that was created by the physicist, the Scottish physicist William
47:52
Speaker 2: Thompson otherwise known as Lord Calvin. This was in the
47:55
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties and you basically you have a hide gauge
48:00
Speaker 2: for particular import and this hide gauge goes up and
48:03
Speaker 2: down and you record the height of the tides every
48:07
Speaker 2: hour for like a year, and it's very irregular because
48:11
Speaker 2: tides don't go up and down very steadily. But then
48:13
Speaker 2: you apply Fouria analysis to it. You extract all the
48:17
Speaker 2: sign curves, and then you build a machine that can
48:20
Speaker 2: reproduce these sign curves and add them together, and then
48:23
Speaker 2: you start cranking it, and the combined sign curves go
48:27
Speaker 2: out to the future, and that predicts the future rise
48:30
Speaker 2: and fall to tides. Brilliant thing, and it's fascinating to me.
48:36
Speaker 2: So I wanted to write about all these things, and
48:42
Speaker 2: I even went back to logarithms, and logarithms is John
48:51
Speaker 2: Napier disclosed his invention of logarithms in sixteen fourteen, so
48:58
Speaker 2: that's like four centuries ago. But this was a way
49:03
Speaker 2: for people to do to make multiplication and division almost
49:09
Speaker 2: as easy as addition and subtraction. Now, when I grew up,
49:15
Speaker 2: I had a slide role. When I was in college,
49:18
Speaker 2: the first pocket calculators were just being introduced. There was
49:22
Speaker 2: this one one of our classmates had, like this really
49:27
Speaker 2: expensive pocket calculator that I don't know, I don't think
49:30
Speaker 2: it actually fit in his pocket, but his parents, his
49:33
Speaker 2: wealthy parents, had given him as a graduation differrom high school.
49:37
Speaker 2: And it was like wow. But eventually, once, once, you
49:42
Speaker 2: could do a multiplication and division just by punching numbers
49:46
Speaker 2: and logarithms as as an art form for scientists and
49:50
Speaker 2: engineers kind of disappeared, but we still But to me,
49:55
Speaker 2: I see logarithms everywhere. I mean most obviously we talk.
50:00
Speaker 2: When there's an earthquake. At the Richter scale, it's logarithmic.
50:05
Speaker 2: But sound decibels is logarithmic. The piano this, the musical
50:12
Speaker 2: scale is logarithmic. Money currency is logarithmic. We don't have
50:20
Speaker 2: We don't have one hundred and one dollar bills, one
50:23
Speaker 2: hundred and two dollar bills, one hundred and three dollar bills.
50:25
Speaker 2: Now we have, it goes in a logarithmic progression one, two, five, ten,
50:31
Speaker 2: twenty fifty, one hundred. So uh, there's there's all this,
50:38
Speaker 2: all this love. We perceive things logarithmically. We perceived time logarithmically.
50:45
Speaker 2: So I wanted to write a book that first showed
50:52
Speaker 2: somebody living now how it was back then when you
50:57
Speaker 2: had to do multiplication and division using logarithms, and first
51:01
Speaker 2: using a table of logarithms, and then using slide role.
51:10
Speaker 2: And I thought, you know, I'm gonna have a comp
51:13
Speaker 2: have to have a companion website for this, because people
51:16
Speaker 2: are gonna want to play around with a slide role,
51:18
Speaker 2: and I'll have a graphical slide role that can play around,
51:21
Speaker 2: you can play around with. And I started, as I
51:25
Speaker 2: started thinking more about this, I thought, why don't I
51:28
Speaker 2: just do the whole book on a website and have
51:33
Speaker 2: have narrated there, have have I can be as free
51:36
Speaker 2: as I want with pictures, I can put in interactive
51:40
Speaker 2: graphics whenever I want. I can use math m L
51:44
Speaker 2: to put in math and all this stuff. So that's
51:51
Speaker 2: what I'm working on, and it's it's, uh, it's proven
51:56
Speaker 2: to be a challenge. But interestingly enough, the website is live.
52:06
Speaker 2: I've because I didn't want to just be testing everything
52:10
Speaker 2: in my own machine or on a on a on
52:12
Speaker 2: a virtual server. It's it's the website's live and I
52:19
Speaker 2: haven't actually disclosed the r L, so nobody's seen it.
52:24
Speaker 2: But uh, the first two chapters are basically there, and
52:32
Speaker 2: I'm like working on because what I realized was that
52:42
Speaker 2: a lot of books of logarithms have trigonometry tables as well,
52:47
Speaker 2: and they have logarithms of trigonometric functions. And yes, of course,
52:52
Speaker 2: when people were doing multiplications and divisions for navigation, for surveying,
53:00
Speaker 2: for observing the heavens. They were doing multiplications and divisions
53:03
Speaker 2: of logarithmic functions. So if you have a logarithmic a
53:07
Speaker 2: logarithm of a sign right on the table, it cuts
53:10
Speaker 2: down a step. So I decided to have some chapters
53:14
Speaker 2: on trigonometry and showing how logarithms of trigonometric functions help
53:21
Speaker 2: help solve trigonometry problems. But really the real trigonometry you
53:28
Speaker 2: want to get into is the trigonometry of the surface
53:32
Speaker 2: of the Earth, which is spherical trigonometry, which is used
53:36
Speaker 2: to be studied by scientists and engineers. I don't I
53:40
Speaker 2: don't know if anybody is teaching a spherical trigonometry course anymore,
53:46
Speaker 2: if it's just a discipline that's mastered by people who
53:52
Speaker 2: need to do math about on this around the surface
53:55
Speaker 2: of the Earth and GPS and stuff like that, but
53:57
Speaker 2: also astronomical calculations. So and this is all like three
54:05
Speaker 2: D graphics. So now I'm getting not into not only
54:07
Speaker 2: too into the HTML five canvas using two D graphics,
54:11
Speaker 2: but also into WebGL doing three D graphics and WebGL.
54:16
Speaker 2: And I looked at like some rappers for WebGL, and
54:20
Speaker 2: I looked at three JS and uh was working with
54:24
Speaker 2: that for a while and then I said, you know,
54:25
Speaker 2: I want to really want to work with web gl
54:27
Speaker 2: directly and it's it's uh, it's proving challenging, but it
54:32
Speaker 2: gives my brain exercise. So if people want to actually
54:36
Speaker 2: look at the first two chapters and not be too
54:39
Speaker 2: critical because the book kind of there's other chapters, but
54:42
Speaker 2: they kind of degenerate into phrases and instead of actual paragraphs.
54:47
Speaker 2: It's and stuff that playing around with. But if people
54:51
Speaker 2: want to do this, the ur l is and it's
54:55
Speaker 2: the title the book Lost Artoflogarithms dot com.
55:01
Speaker 4: Wow.
55:02
Speaker 2: Thanks, so you're the first, Okay, And what I beg
55:07
Speaker 2: people beg people do now look at this on a
55:10
Speaker 2: phone or a tablet? Pee, Please use a real computer
55:15
Speaker 2: because on the phone it's just and I'm looking on
55:21
Speaker 2: the website doesn't even work. It doesn't work right on.
55:25
Speaker 2: I have a Mac an iPad Mini and it doesn't
55:29
Speaker 2: work good on that tablet either. I haven't tried it.
55:32
Speaker 2: We have a we have an Android tablet kicking around here.
55:35
Speaker 2: I haven't tried that either. But it's really best on
55:38
Speaker 2: a real computer. You know, that's stopper laptop.
55:42
Speaker 4: At least we can do email addresses on it.
55:46
Speaker 2: These people want to have feedback or something. But this
55:48
Speaker 2: is uh, I've given myself that this really big challenge.
55:53
Speaker 2: And I don't know when I'm going to finish this
55:55
Speaker 2: book because I have another couple of books in mind
55:59
Speaker 2: matter more like books. I want to do some real books.
56:02
Speaker 2: This is this is an experiment of an entire web
56:05
Speaker 2: based book with interactive two D and three D graphics,
56:09
Speaker 2: and it's going to be great for this book if
56:14
Speaker 2: anybody cares about reading about logarithms. But uh, I think
56:20
Speaker 2: I'd like to do a real book next after this.
56:23
Speaker 2: After I'm done with this, you know, whether it takes
56:25
Speaker 2: me into my eighties or not, I don't know.
56:28
Speaker 3: So well, look, thank you so much of that exclusive
56:34
Speaker 3: for the listeners. If come on, if you if you
56:36
Speaker 3: know that, I'm not even going to include it in
56:39
Speaker 3: via in the show, we'll put the link in.
56:42
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do that, child. I want to
56:43
Speaker 4: I want I want only to be the people who
56:45
Speaker 4: listened to a full conversation.
56:47
Speaker 3: You're ready to kind of dig it up for themselves,
56:49
Speaker 3: because then you'll get the real call that you committed project.
56:54
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm going to have to have
56:56
Speaker 2: a link to this somewhere. I don't know it's it's
56:59
Speaker 2: going to come soon, but there's some.
57:02
Speaker 4: You tell me, we can put it. We can put
57:04
Speaker 4: it in a show notes if you want more people
57:07
Speaker 4: see it.
57:08
Speaker 3: But you know, and I hope, I hope that sounds
57:10
Speaker 3: like a very consuming project. I hope you do get
57:12
Speaker 3: to some more typical books in the future as well,
57:16
Speaker 3: because I'm an I'm an old fashioned reader.
57:18
Speaker 4: I do like I do like the book for myself.
57:20
Speaker 3: And look, it just reminds me to say, thank you
57:23
Speaker 3: Charles fur for coming on the show, thank you for
57:25
Speaker 3: your writing, thank you for being so generous with your
57:28
Speaker 3: time and your thoughts. And it's a great pleasure to
57:31
Speaker 3: talk to you and to meet you. It's been fantastic.
57:34
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. This has been a your pleasure.
57:38
Speaker 1: To make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe
57:41
Speaker 1: to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite
57:44
Speaker 1: podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts, make
57:47
Speaker 1: sure to leave a rating of the show. Just have
57:50
Speaker 1: the number of stars you think the podcast deserves. If
57:53
Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more about how Next Thing can
57:55
Speaker 1: help you improve your digital employee experience, head over to
57:58
Speaker 1: next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
58:01
Speaker 1: Until next time,