Mr. George Dyson

An author and historian of technology whose publications broadly cover the evolution of technology in relation to the physical environment and the direction of society. He has written on wide topics that include the history of computing, the development of algorithms and intelligence, communication systems, space exploration, and the design of water craft. Lecturing widely at academic institutions, corporations, and high-tech conferences, he gives a historical context to the evolution of technology in modern society and provides thought-provoking ideas on the directions in which technology, such as the Internet, might develop. He has been a visiting lecturer and research associate at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College and was Director?s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 2002-03. He is a frequent contributor to the Edge Foundation. He is the son of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, the brother of Esther Dyson, and the grandson of the British composer Sir George Dyson. When he was sixteen he went to live in British Columbia to pursue his interest in kayaking and escape his father's shadow. From 1972-1975, he lived in a treehouse at a height of 30 metres that he built from salvaged materials on the shore of Burrard Inlet. He became a Canadian citizen and spent 20 years in British Columbia, designing kayaks, researching historic voyages and native peoples, and exploring the Inside Passage. He is the author of Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965 and Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, in which he expanded upon the premise of Samuel Butler's 1863 article of the same name and suggested coherently that the Internet is a living, sentient being. His book, Turing's Cathedral (2012), has been described as "a creation myth of the digital universe." He is the subject of Kenneth Brower's 1978 book The Starship and the Canoe. He was the founder of Dyson, Baidarka & Company, a designer of Aleut-style skin kayaks, and he is credited with the revival of the baidarka style of kayak. He lives and works in Bellingham, Washington, and is the father of Lauren Dyson.