This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.
There is no new hacker word of the week this week.
The feature this week is an interview with one of my very favorite authors,
Rudy Rucker. Rudy is also a mathematician and a computer scientist. It was "
Spaceland" his notional sequel to "
Flatland" that first got me interest in his work. I also was immensely intrigued by his non-fiction work, "
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul", which I've
reviewed here previously.
In addition to discussing his latest books--the duology, "
Postsingular" and "
Hylozoic", and the re-released
Ware Tetralogy--we also touch on his thoughts on the
limits of VR, chaos and complexity, the state of computing, the role of the alien where Rudy mentions his novel "
The Secret of Life", continuing the story of "Hylozoic" where I mentioned a previous interview with Tor.com on the subject (on page 172 of this
PDF, from July of 2009), 3D printing and natural gnarl, and Rudy's upcoming books.
On the topic of 3D printing, it was
Scott Summit's talk I was thinking of but couldn't recall. The architect of the
Walt Disney Concert Hall and the
Guggenheim Bilbao that Rudy mentioned was Frank Gehry. He also mentioned the design group,
Nervous System, who uses the
Processing library for their 3D printed objects.
If you want a taste for the story about Turing, Rudy has released three short stories that may make up the first three chapters of a new novel: "
The Imitation Game", "
The Skug" and "
Tangier Routines".
View the
detailed show notes online.