George Dyson – historian, boat maker, and volunteer Staff Historian at Radiant Earth – returns for his fourth appearance to discuss The Tale of the Big Computer, written by Hannes Alfvén in 1966 under the pseudonym Olof Johannesson. Published in Swedish in 1966, the novel is a remarkably prescient vision of how machine intelligence could quietly take over the organization of society. We discuss Alfvén’s “sociological complexity theorem,” his uncannily accurate predictions of the internet and neural interfaces, a devastating early joke about open-source code as a safeguard, how influence technology now outpaces vote-counting technology, the case for local governance, and why we need to get this book back in print.

Show notes:

• The Tale of the Big Computer on the Internet Archive
• Hannes Alfvén on Wikipedia — the physicist behind the pen name Olof Johannesson; winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics
• Alfvén waves — the electromagnetic waves in plasma that bear his name, long dismissed as crackpot science before being confirmed throughout the universe
• BESK — the Stockholm copy of von Neumann’s Princeton machine that outpaced the original by using solid-state diodes; Alfvén was deeply involved in its development
• Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs — the international forum for scientists to address nuclear risk, founded by Joseph Rotblat (the only Manhattan Project scientist who quit when Germany’s nuclear program proved non-existent), which Alfvén later chaired
• What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
• Thomas Ray and Tierra — the artificial life program that aimed to evolve digital organisms; Ray famously replied to Ray Kurzweil’s case for immortality: “I prefer to achieve my immortality the old-fashioned way — through my children”
• Origins of Life by Freeman Dyson — contains the observation that life had to invent death in order to evolve
• Elinor Ostrom — Nobel laureate whose research on common-pool resources shows that effective, accountable governance of shared resources can only happen locally
• Politics Is for Power by Eitan Hersh — argues that most political engagement today is performative “political hobbyism” that distracts people from accruing real power where they live
• “Unicorn Show Ponies and Gazelles” — Jed’s essay on technology theater in organizations, which finds its Ur-example in Alfvén’s gilded government machine