We are the kind of animal that consumes information. It’s a language we move to wherever we go. Often unconsciously. But now information is starting to redefine our world. Its geography and its economy. Horizon: The Electronic Frontier, BBC 1993
Until now information has mostly moved around by phone. ibid.
In this world everything – literature, music, speech, even art – is so many dots and zeros of digitalised information. And the computer deals with it indiscriminately. ibid.
But how can you protect something that has no physical existence and can be copied or changed undetectable? ibid.
The camera can now lie. ibid.
Around five years ago a group of scientists and philosophers began arguing there might be another way to travel in Time. But it wasn’t a machine in space. And it wouldn’t involve moving galaxies around. It would be a computer. And the pioneer of this unlikely approach was that unlikely pioneer of time machines, Professor Frank Tipler. Horizon: Time Trip, BBC 2003
It was this infinite computing power, Tippler said, which would allow a future civilisation to travel in Time. They would do it using virtual reality. ibid.
A super civilisation wouldn’t just make one perfect simulation of the past ... If the computer of the future is churning out billions of simulations, how do we know we’re living in the original real world and not one of the billions of copies? In fact the odds against us being real are billions to one against. ibid.
Now we’re told we may not even be real. Instead we may merely be part of a computer system. Our free will, as Newton suggested, is probably an illusion. And just to rub it in, we are being controlled by a super-intelligent superior being. ibid.
Moore’s Law relates to the one thing that has powered our progress and defined our age. Moore’s Law is the law that governs the silicon chip. One of the greatest triggers of economic progress ever. Horizon: The Dark Secret of Hendrik Schon 2004
It seems there is a limit to how small silicon can go before it breaks down. ibid.
Schon believed that the answer may not lie with silicon but rather something totally different: a transistor made from organic molecules – molecules based on carbon. ibid.
Schon took his findings to the most prestigious scientific journal of them all – Nature. His paper caused a sensation. ibid.
One day scientists could manipulate molecules to create tiny computers that will fuse with our body. ibid.
The results just didn’t make sense. Two totally different experiments with exactly the same results was impossible. But that’s what Schon’s papers reported. ibid.
For months now rumours were circulating about Schon’s work. Many of his claims just could not be repeated in the lab by others. ibid.
The investigation revealed the truth: the investigation established that Schon had behaved recklessly and that he had deliberately fabricated some data. ibid.
Many of his greatest triumphs had been based on fabricated data. It was a shocking revelation. ibid.
A new class of computers like nothing else the world has ever seen – the Quantum Computer. Horizon: What Is Reality? BBC 2011
It’s a rather unlikely group of scientists. They’re experts in codes and code-breaking. Leading researchers in the baffling world of quantum physics. And they’ve built the most advanced computer in the universe. And together they are taking on one common enemy: hackers. Horizon: Defeating the Hackers, narrator Rupert Penry-Jones, Dr Franco Wong et al, BBC 2013 *****
The extent of government eavesdropping has been revealed. ibid.
No-one’s quite sure who’s hacking who. ibid.
Quantum mechanics: weird: ‘With a single atom … where anything is starts to break down … Things can be in many places at the same time.’ ibid.
The processor … The quantum chip considers every possible solution all at the same time. ibid.
In the weird world of the very small, things can be in more than one place at once. But all that changes at the moment you actually look and measure where something is. It’s known as the Observer Effect. ibid.
A message: a one or a zero. It means if you are sending a quantum message, you can tell if someone else is observing. If there is an eavesdropper on the line. ibid.
Infection is spreading all across the world. ibid.
Transistors were to become the building blocks of ... computers ... The silicon revolution gathered pace. Stuff: A Horizon Guide to Materials, BBC 2012
The silicon chip – a device that promised a brave new world. ibid.
Japan was at the forefront of the silicon gold-rush. ibid.
There is a physical limit to how small silicon resisters can be made. ibid.
Once thought made us human ... being taken on by machines. Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Horizon: The Hunt For AI, BBC 2012
Could they extend human intelligence in unimaginable new ways? ibid.
The computer is starting to think in a multi-intelligible way. ibid.
Bletchley Park: what happened here still resonates today ... He was the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing. ibid.
They only hope they had of cracking the Enigma code was to create another machine to do it. ibid.
Turing’s ideas about machines that could mimic the human mind really started to take shape ... He asked the question, Can a machine think? ibid.
The hunt for artificial intelligence has become tied up with one technology: the computer. ibid.
This machine could seemingly understand all the complexities, puns and riddles of natural language much faster than any human. But was this true artificial intelligence? Was Watson thinking like us? ibid.
Blue Jean is solving incredible complex calculations about biological processes. ibid.
Intuition, creativity and imagination are what make us so unique. ibid.
Without a body, artificial intelligence cannot exist. ibid.
Getting a computer to see has become one of the most difficult challenges in AI. ibid.
And perhaps the secret to creating thinking machines lies in letting them develop as we do. ibid.
Artificial intelligence: what is it? How does it work? What can it do? Horizon: A Horizon Guide to Artificial Intelligence, BBC 2018
It wasn’t so long ago we thought artificially intelligent robots would take over the world. ibid.
It was beginning to dawn on the scientist of the ’70s exactly what computers could be capable of. ibid.
Scientists and engineers began to re-evaluate intelligence to understand what thinking really was and to program truly intelligent machines. ibid.
Inside a simulation you can’t tell any difference between the simulated environment – the virtual reality – and the real environment. In fact this environment we now find ourselves in could be just a simulation. Professor Frank Tippler
Greek mythology is full of strange alien-type creatures and beings with supernatural powers and advanced technology. In 1900 the wreck of an ancient ship was found off the coast of Crete near the Island of Antikythera. Divers found lumps of corroded bronze ... A complex and elegantly-made mechanism like the interior of an expensive hand-made clock. Chris Everard, Secret Space II
These men have a challenge: to build a computer that uses no electricity. Only metal and wood. And it must do the seemingly impossible. Calculate the movement of the heavens. Ancient Computer
It’s already been done: over two thousand years ago in Greece someone invented a hand-cranked computer that could de-code the solar system. ibid.
This is the story of one of the most extraordinary finds in history. This corroded bronze object is a machine that can look into the future. It was built two thousand years ago in ancient Greece. The Two Thousand Year Old Computer, BBC 2012
It’s known as the Antikythera Mechanism ... It could predict eclipses. ibid.
Who had invented this extraordinary machine? ... The designer of the mechanism came from Corinth. ibid.
What happened to the brilliant Greek technology that produced the world’s first computer? Why was it never developed? Why was it lost from the Western world? ibid.
From the X-rays, Professor Price reconstructed the machine now known as the Antikythera Mechanism. It was a wooden box with bronze plates. A handle moves inter-connected dials at the front and back. The innards of the mechanism are a complex mesh of cog-wheels and gears until now concealed in the heart of the fragments. It was designed, he believes, as a computer to show varying movements of the sun, moon and planets. Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World