Very odd when you travel thousands of miles to learn about new technologies and end up applauding someone who's theme was what John von Neumann did in the 1940s. Still, George Dyson gave a fantastic talk about the father of modern computing, and about Kurt Goedel, who had an office above his at Princeton. (Prof Einstein was a couple of doors away.)
Dyson got access to some boxes of archives that haven't been seen for 50 years, and produced some fascinating bits of logs, letters, and memoes. Much of this was "human interest", like the complaint about the engineers putting too much sugar in their tea. Whatever, the talk got the biggest ovation I've ever seen at ETech, and there has been some tough competition.
Dyson's book, Darwin Among the Machines, has already covered the same ground, so maybe he'll do an expanded edition.
I saw George's sister, venture capitalist and former Online columnist Esther Dyson, chatting in the lobby, so presumably she was in the audience.
