full transcript
"From the Ted Talk by George Dyson: The birth of the computer"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So, when I went into these archives looking at this stuff, lo and behold, the acvirsiht came up one day, saying, "I think we found another box that had been thrown out." And it was his universe on punch cards. So there it is, 50 yaers later, sitting there — sort of suspended animation. That's the instructions for rniunng — this is actually the source code for one of those universes, with a note from the engineers saying they're having some problems. "There must be something about this code that you haven't explained yet." And I think that's really the truth. We still don't understand how these very smlpie instructions can lead to increasing complexity. What's the dividing line between when that is lifelike and when it really is alive? These cards, now, thanks to me shionwg up, are being saved. And the qiuoestn is, should we run them or not? You know, could we get them running? Do you want to let it loose on the ierntent? These machines would think they — these organisms, if they came back to life now — whether they've died and gone to heaven, there's a universe. My laptop is 10 thousand moiilln times the size of the universe that they lived in when bclerrilai quit the project.

Open Cloze

So, when I went into these archives looking at this stuff, lo and behold, the _________ came up one day, saying, "I think we found another box that had been thrown out." And it was his universe on punch cards. So there it is, 50 _____ later, sitting there — sort of suspended animation. That's the instructions for _______ — this is actually the source code for one of those universes, with a note from the engineers saying they're having some problems. "There must be something about this code that you haven't explained yet." And I think that's really the truth. We still don't understand how these very ______ instructions can lead to increasing complexity. What's the dividing line between when that is lifelike and when it really is alive? These cards, now, thanks to me _______ up, are being saved. And the ________ is, should we run them or not? You know, could we get them running? Do you want to let it loose on the ________? These machines would think they — these organisms, if they came back to life now — whether they've died and gone to heaven, there's a universe. My laptop is 10 thousand _______ times the size of the universe that they lived in when __________ quit the project.

Solution

  1. simple
  2. showing
  3. million
  4. question
  5. archivist
  6. years
  7. running
  8. internet
  9. barricelli

Original Text

So, when I went into these archives looking at this stuff, lo and behold, the archivist came up one day, saying, "I think we found another box that had been thrown out." And it was his universe on punch cards. So there it is, 50 years later, sitting there — sort of suspended animation. That's the instructions for running — this is actually the source code for one of those universes, with a note from the engineers saying they're having some problems. "There must be something about this code that you haven't explained yet." And I think that's really the truth. We still don't understand how these very simple instructions can lead to increasing complexity. What's the dividing line between when that is lifelike and when it really is alive? These cards, now, thanks to me showing up, are being saved. And the question is, should we run them or not? You know, could we get them running? Do you want to let it loose on the Internet? These machines would think they — these organisms, if they came back to life now — whether they've died and gone to heaven, there's a universe. My laptop is 10 thousand million times the size of the universe that they lived in when Barricelli quit the project.

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
von neumann 12
vacuum tubes 4
julian bigelow 3

Important Words

  1. alive
  2. animation
  3. archives
  4. archivist
  5. barricelli
  6. behold
  7. box
  8. cards
  9. code
  10. complexity
  11. day
  12. died
  13. dividing
  14. engineers
  15. explained
  16. heaven
  17. increasing
  18. instructions
  19. internet
  20. laptop
  21. lead
  22. life
  23. lifelike
  24. line
  25. lived
  26. lo
  27. loose
  28. machines
  29. million
  30. note
  31. organisms
  32. problems
  33. project
  34. punch
  35. question
  36. quit
  37. run
  38. running
  39. saved
  40. showing
  41. simple
  42. sitting
  43. size
  44. sort
  45. source
  46. stuff
  47. suspended
  48. thousand
  49. thrown
  50. times
  51. truth
  52. understand
  53. universe
  54. universes
  55. years