Ian D. Watson

I am a writer, blogger and academic at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. I've published several books and over one hundred scientific papers, on various aspects of artificial intelligence, and am a regular speaker at computing conferences worldwide. I also regularly appear in NZ media talking about AI. My most recent book, called "The Universal Machine - from the dawn of computing to digital consciousness" was published in 2012 by Springer. It is a history of computing from Victorian times and into the future.

Q. Who invented the computer? [hint it's not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates]

Be honest, you don't know, do you? Don't you think it's strange that you don't know who invented something as widely used as the computer?

For someone who has such an influence on us all, computing's Einstein Alan Turing is virtually unknown. It is his metaphor of the computer as a universal machine that is the unifying theme of this book. The computer, unlike other inventions, is universal; you can use a computer to do many different tasks: write documents, compose music, design buildings, plan and book vacations, create movies, inhabit virtual worlds, communicate with friends...

The story of the computer begins in the 1840's with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and Lady Ada Lovelace's writings on machine intelligence. It then moves onto early US office automation machines, Alan Turing's pioneering work on the theory of computation and the first computers of the 1930s and 40s. The innovations in Silicon Valley in the 60's leading to the development of personal computing, Apple and Microsoft and the PC boom of the 70's and 80's. The book doesn't just talk about technology but introduces key people in the computer's development: Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Apple's Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, and many other people. In many ways this story is more about people and the changes computers have caused in society than it is about machines.

Concluding with the advent of ubiquitous computing the book explores the impact that artificial intelligence will have in the future and the promise of quantum and molecular computing. The computer has been a radical invention. In less than a single human life (sixty-five years from 1945 to 2010) the computer has developed from a multi million-dollar governmental behemoth to a tiny chip worth cents. Computers are transforming economies, societies and cultures like no other human invention before.