CHM Blog

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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,

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

Museum News

Len Shustek: A Man with a Vision . . . for a Museum

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Len made an impression on everyone he met at CHM, with his passion for the Museum and its activities extending well beyond the board room. He could often be found at planning committee meetings for CHM's Fellow Awards, in the interviewer seat for an oral history, or serving as a subject matter and industry expert for a

Behind the Scenes

The Future: Humans and AI

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Pamela McCorduck may be one of the few people qualified to make a prediction about where the development of artificial intelligence will lead. But, as a true humanist, she avoids an invitation to hubris. Instead, in the excerpt below from the end of her 2019 book, "This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Ar