Turing's Cathedral

Edge.org has an absolutely brilliant article by George Dyson, based on a talk he recently gave at Google. Entitled Turing's Cathedral, it contains the usual Dyson deep dive into the history of computing, reminding us just how prescient and thoughtful Turing, von Neumann, and the other pioneers were, along with some spectacular, evocative imagery, and a killer punch line. One of the more thought-provoking articles about Google and the future of computing that I've seen.
 

I'm half-kicking myself for being behind on my email, since George sent me the text of the talk a few days before he went to Google, with the subject line "Web 3.0", and I had the half-formed thought to ask George if I could publish it, before that thought got buried in the incoming flood of other, more urgent mail. But I'm only half-kicking myself, since Edge did such a sweet job of getting George to flesh out the talk into a fully framed article, incorporating the experience of actually delivering it at Google.