I was a young filmmaker doing editing & assistant camera on this incredible film. Why do I say incredible? Because it is recording a moment in time when the people who appear in it had a sense of what computers would do. I posted the full documentary because many of my subscribers have asked me to do so. Please allow the ads to run if you can tolerate them.
The film was made in 1966 with a grant from the Mathematics Association of America. John von Neumann was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. He contributed so much to physics, mathematics, chemistry, geometry and the evolution of the computer. His work included including the creation of Game Theory, Quantum Mechanics, the development of nuclear power and the very earliest computer programming and robotics.
The documentary presents lengthy dialogues with the 20th century's leading scientists including Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, Paul Halmos, Herman Goldstine and Oskar Morgenstern. Unfortunately Robert Oppenheimer was not available to be interviewed.
Von Neumann's work on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics is considered a monumental achievement. And his work on the development of modern computer architecture, known as the von Neumann architecture and the stored-program concept has had a lasting impact on computer science and technology.
Von Neumann was a Hungarian-American. He immigrated to the United States in the 1930s. He is famous for several key achievements including:
Game theory: He co-authored a book titled "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" (1944) that laid the foundation for modern game theory. The book applied mathematical principles to understand competitive situations and decision-making in economics, politics, and other fields.
Quantum mechanics: Von Neumann made important contributions to the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, particularly through his work on the rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics using linear operators and Hilbert spaces.
Computer science and architecture: Von Neumann played a crucial role in the development of computer science, especially through his work on the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) project. While working on the EDVAC project, he introduced the concept of a stored-program computer, where both data and instructions are stored in memory. This idea was a departure from the earlier designs where computers were programmed using hardware settings or physical wiring.
Von Neumann's stored-program concept led to the development of high-level programming languages and software as we know them today. The idea enabled computers to be more easily reprogrammed for various tasks and allowed programmers to write code in a more human-readable format, which would then be translated into machine code that the computer could understand.
Although von Neumann did not directly create any specific programming languages, his ideas on computer architecture and the stored-program concept laid the foundation for the subsequent development of programming languages and software. His influence is still felt in computer science and programming today.
As I was crafting this description, I thought of my colleagues who work today in Cloud-based software architecture That refers to the design and organization of software systems that operate in a cloud computing environment. I asked one of them to tell me in relatively simple terms what that is and what it does. He wrote:
In a cloud-based architecture, resources can be easily scaled up or down as required. This is especially important for handling varying loads of user requests.
Cloud-based architectures are designed to be resilient to hardware/software failures and to continue to provide services even when certain components fail. Cloud-based architectures often involve a distributed system where various components of the software are located on different servers or even in different geographic locations.
Many cloud architectures use a microservices approach, where the application is divided into smaller, independent services that communicate with each other.
Cloud-based architectures involve large amounts of data, which need to be stored and managed effectively. This can involve databases, data warehouses and other data storage solutions.
Given that data is being stored and transferred over the internet, cloud-based architectures need to prioritize security to protect sensitive information.
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David Hoffman filmmaker
12 май 2023
