More than most of us, the science historian George Dyson spends his days thinking about technologies, old and very new. His 1986 book “Baidarka” was a meditation on an ancient Aleut kayak.
Eleven years later, in “Darwin Among the Machines,” he wrote of the history of artificial intelligence. “Project Orion,” in 2002, focused on an abortive NASA project to use nuclear bombs to power space rockets. “Turing’s Cathedral,” his reconstruction of the early moments of modern digital computing, will be published in March.
Though this 58-year-old author’s works are centered on technology, they often have an autobiographical subtext. Freeman Dyson, the physicist and mathematician who was a protagonist of Project Orion, is his father. Esther Dyson, the Internet philosopher and high-tech investor, is his sister. We spoke for three hours at his cottage here, and later by telephone. A condensed and edited version of the conversations follows.
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