{"id":99,"date":"2013-11-29T12:18:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T12:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/?p=99"},"modified":"2014-06-24T11:07:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T11:07:19","slug":"george-dyson-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"George Dyson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/George-Dyson-portrait.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-171 alignleft\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" alt=\"George Dyson portrait\" src=\"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/George-Dyson-portrait-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/George-Dyson-portrait-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/George-Dyson-portrait.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>It was summer 2001. I had just finished a three hour interview with <a title=\"George Dyson\" href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.ted.com\/speakers\/george_dyson.html\" target=\"_blank\">George Dyson<\/a> within a few hundred yards of Winchester Cathedral. He disappeared off to back to where he was staying, and meet his father, Freeman; somewhere in the back streets of the medieval town. I thought it unlikely I&#8217;d meet him again, and so far this has indeed been the case.<\/p>\n<p>At times he said things, which had reminded me of\u00a0 Kenneth Brower&#8217;s description of Dyson senior seeing the world in equations. But in the main he came across as pretty much like many a human being, with vulnerabilities. One particular remark, during the long conversation, which ranged across quite a bit of terrain, and would eventually become one of the <a title=\"Dyson - FDR7\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fourthdoor.co.uk\/review\/issue7.htm\" target=\"_blank\">longer Fourth Door Review&#8217;s feature&#8217;s, in no 7<\/a>\u00a0 was how, when he finished his idiosyncratic history of the early years of computers, and the computer pioneers who brought this world into existence, <a title=\"Darwin among the machines book link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/nf\/Book\/...\/0,,9780718196950,00.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Darwin Among the Machines,<\/em><\/a> &#8220;it&#8217;s going to be a really long, long time until I write another book,&#8221; and the slow arduous inflection of these words made it sound like he really didn&#8217;t like writing, and likely or not there wouldn&#8217;t be any other books at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was summer 2001. I had just finished a three hour interview with George Dyson within a few hundred yards of Winchester Cathedral. He disappeared off to back to where he was staying, and meet his father, Freeman; somewhere in the back streets of the medieval town. I thought it unlikely I&#8217;d meet him again, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ongoing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthdoor.org\/ongoing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}