Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.
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episode 14: Creeping Towards Viruses
Computer viruses today pose a very real threat. However, it turns out that their origins are actually very non-threatening. Today, we are going to look at some of the first viruses. We will see how they developed from technical writing, to pulp sci-fi, to traveling code.
I talk about The Scarred Man by Gregory Benford in this episode, you can read the full short story here: http://www.gregorybenford.com/extra/the-scarred-man-returns/
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Important dates in this episode:
1949: John Von Neumann Writes 'Theory and Organization of Complex Automata'
1969: 'The Scarred Man' Written by Gregory Benford, Coined Term 'Virus'
1971: Creeper Virus Unleashed