CHM Blog
The CHM blog showcases ideas and insights from our vibrant community in Silicon Valley and around the world. We take you behind the scenes of our programming, collections, and exhibits. Connecting the past to the present and into the future, we decode technology for everyone.-
CHM Live
The Creativity of Maintainability: Astronaut Kathryn Sullivan Decodes the Hubble Space Telescope
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
On June 24, 2020, Sullivan joined David C. Brock in a virtual CHM Live event and shared lessons about the importance of maintenance and invention for the Hubble, a device that’s revolutionized our understanding of the universe.
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Guest Blog
Silicon Valley’s Office Culture Will Survive COVID-19—Bet On It
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Yes, we will work differently in the post-pandemic world. For some of us that will mean working from home more often. It’s even likely that more people will work from home than did before the pandemic. But not everyone. Not even most people. Especially in Silicon Valley.
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From the Collection
Transplanting the Mac’s Central Processor: Gary Davidian and His 68000 Emulator
Monday, June 29, 2020
Last week Apple announced its switch from Intel to its own ARM-based processors for all future #Macs. Apple has done this multiple times in its history, starting with the transition from Motorola 68000 chips to PowerPC in the early 1990s.
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From the Collection, Software History Center
CHM Releases New Recordings and Personal Stories with AI Expert Systems Pioneers
Thursday, June 25, 2020
As CHM continues its commitment to decoding the history and impact of AI, we are honored to preserve and make accessible these unique discussions with some of the field’s leading pioneers
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From the Collection
Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
Friday, June 19, 2020
Until recently, across a half-century perhaps fewer than a dozen people had ever had the opportunity to read Dennis Ritchie’s dissertation—the intellectual and biographical fork-in-the-road separating an academic career in computer science from the one at Bell Labs leading to C and Unix. Why?
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Remarkable People
Get Out of the Building: Steve Blank, Entrepreneurship, and Making the World a Better Place
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Today, workers at the world’s largest technology companies such as Apple and Google have protested against federal contracts while private and public organizations continue to fall victim to sophisticated cyber attacks. These actions beg the question: If Silicon Valley and the federal government improve their relations
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CHM Live
Reading Your Face: How To Humanize Technology With Emotion AI
Thursday, June 4, 2020
During a CHM Live virtual event on May 18, 2020, Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, a pioneer in the field of “emotion AI” and cofounder of Affectiva, talked with NPR’s Aarthi Shahani about her new book, Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity By Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology.
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Guest Blog
Homelessness: The Problem that Even Silicon Valley Can’t Seem to Solve
Friday, May 29, 2020
Silicon Valley is known for a lot of things: The co-invention of the microchip, the launch pad for the venture capital industry, the home of Google, Facebook and Apple, the setting for HBO’s hilarious send-up of tech culture. We can now add one more thing to the list: Homelessness.
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CHM Live
Keeping the Dream Alive: Kevin Scott Imagines the Future of AI
Friday, May 22, 2020
Kevin Scott is unapologetically optimistic in his hope that perhaps more than any other technology that has come before, artificial intelligence has the potential to make that dream come true. Tech can serve humanity, he says, if we take the responsibility to make it do so. During a virtual CHM Live event on April 27,
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Curatorial Insights
Pioneers of Semiconductor Non-Volatile Memory (NVM): The First Four Decades
Monday, May 18, 2020
As with every significant semiconductor product development, from the transistor to the microprocessor, NVM devices evolved from the work of pioneering researchers who built on the efforts of their predecessors through intuitive insights, lucky breaks, trial and error, and a determination to ignore the doubts of naysay