physical computing

A 1979 CBC radio interview in which Ted Nelson tries to explain how computers could serve as tools for thinking and visualizing. The interviewer keeps failing to grasp the idea, and Nelson patiently answers again and again.

Alan Kay visits Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science in 2007 for an informal conversation with faculty and students. He discusses the state of CS education and criticizes mainstream computing.

Lex Fridman interviews chip architect Jim Keller about the future of computing, AI, life and consciousness. Topics include CPU design, branch prediction and why imperfect designs often win.

Lex Fridman's long interview with Chris Lattner, creator of LLVM and Swift, covering the future of computing and programming languages. It touches on compilers, hardware, and his work at Apple, Tesla, Google and SiFive.

A short clip of Steve Jobs describing the computer as a bicycle for the mind. He compares human efficiency of travel to what computers do for mental work.

Jeff Geerling interviews Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton about the Pi shortage, the RP2040, RISC-V, the Sony investment and the origin of the name.

Grace Hopper appears on Letterman and uses a foot-long piece of wire to show how far light travels in a nanosecond.

The Centre for Computing History reunites Chris Curry, Steve Furber and Hermann Hauser to rewatch the BBC drama Micro Men on its tenth anniversary. They reminisce about Acorn and the early British home computer era.

Brian Kernighan interviews Unix co-creator Ken Thompson at VCF East 2019. Thompson recounts how he was hired at Bell Labs, writing the Unix kernel in about three weeks, the origins of B and TMG, pipes, and other anecdotes.

A roughly three-hour Computer History Museum oral history interview of Donald Knuth by Edward Feigenbaum, recorded in 2007. Knuth covers his family, music, early programming, his thesis, The Art of Computer Programming, and the detour into TeX and METAFONT.

A 1984 Computer Chronicles segment in which Susan Kare explains the ergonomics and interface design of the original Macintosh. She introduces the interface step by step for newcomers.

A one-minute clip of Steve Jobs at the D3 conference in 2005 discussing virtual reality. He compares VR headsets to headphones for video, an analogy later applied to Apple's Vision Pro.

A short clip from an ACM and Computer History Museum interview in which Leslie Lamport discusses writing his paper on time, clocks and the ordering of events. He explains its link to special relativity.

A roughly 72-minute interview with Steve Jobs, believed to come from the 1995 interviews made for the Triumph of the Nerds documentary. He reflects on Apple and the early computer industry.

A ten-minute clip of Richard Feynman describing how mathematicians and physicists differ in their interests and customs. He argues physics rests on visualizing and applying math rather than pure abstraction.

Lex Fridman interviews Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum, cryptocurrency and the future of money. The conversation also touches on technical topics such as quantum computing and mining.

A short excerpt from Werner Herzog's film Lo and Behold in which Ted Nelson lays out his ideas about hypertext and interconnection. Herzog concludes that Nelson is the only sane person in computing.

Part two of a Computer History Museum oral history with Gary Davidian, covering his work on the 68000 emulator for PowerPC at Apple, Power Computing, clean-room contracting and later performance optimization work. It is nearly three hours long.

Grady Booch interviews John Backus, who led the IBM team that created FORTRAN in 1957, for the Computer History Museum in 2006. Backus describes the development of the first successful high-level language and its compiler. The interview runs 88 minutes.

A Computer History Museum interview in which John Markoff of the New York Times talks with Douglas Engelbart about his life and research. It covers the influences and struggles behind his work on the mouse, hypertext and collaborative computing, and his aim of helping humanity tackle complex problems.

The 2007 D5 conference joint interview of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, discussing the history of Apple and Microsoft, partnership, competition and computing's future.