Recorded only a few months after Steve Jobs passed away, his award-winning biographer, Walter Isaacson, joined CHM's CEO at the time, John Hollar, to discuss one of the most celebrated figures in computer history.
This conversation was recorded on December 13, 2011 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the Revolutionaries series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
On the 50th anniversary of the Alto, many of its creators and some of today’s leading inventors gathered at CHM to share the Alto’s legacy and discuss what we can expect for the future of computing research—centered today on artificial intelligence (AI).
The program included two panels:
In the first, CHM Trustee John Shoch, who worked at PARC as a graduate student, moderated a discussion with two of Alto’s designers, Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi. Alan Kay participated via video.
The second panel focused on artificial intelligence, arguably the most revolutionary sector in today's computing landscape. CHM Trustee Diane Souvaine led the discussion with two computer scientists from pioneering research labs: Ilya Sutskever,who was then cofounder and chief scientist of Open AI, and Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz.
This conversation was recorded on April 26, 2023 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Innovations in artificial intelligence are not only changing the present, they’re also revolutionizing the study of history. In this episode, an expert panel shares their groundbreaking work deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls, which were burned in the same volcanic eruption that destroyed nearby Pompeii and were thought to have been lost forever.
The panel included:
Nat Friedman, investor and entrepreneur who co-launched the Vesuvius Challenge
Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor of papyrology at the University of Naples Federico II
Brent Seales, the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky.
CHM Senior Producer and Manager of Programming Russell Ihrig moderated.
The program was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
This conversation was recorded on June 10, 2025 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Do you know who has your personal data? Experts featured in NOVA’s documentary, Secrets In Your Data, explored this question and more on stage at CHM.
The Panel included Eva Galperin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Patrick Jackson of Disconnect, and Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive
Physician Alok Patel, who also hosted the NOVA episode, moderated.
This conversation was recorded on May 16, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
How can we ensure that every language—and the communities that speak them—can fully participate in the digital world? Hear from Unicode pioneers and language experts as they discuss the evolution of language support, the barriers to true linguistic inclusivity online, and why ensuring digital access is about more than just code—it’s about culture, identity, and the survival of languages.
PANEL:
Roy Boney, Jr, Cherokee Language Revitalization Manager at Cherokee Film
Mark Davis, Cofounder and CTO, Unicode Consortium
Anushah Hossain, Research Director of the Script Encoding Initiative
Moderator: Teresa Marshall, Vice President of Globalization & Localization at Salesforce
This conversation was recorded on May 13, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on a QWERTY keyboard with only a few dozen keys designed for English? Thomas Mullaney, professor of Chinese history at Stanford University, shares insights about this challenge from his book, The Chinese Computer: a Global History of the Information Age in a conversation with Yangyang Chen, a research scholar and fellow at the Yale Law School.
This program was generously supported by the Bin Lin and Daisy Liu Family Foundation.
The conversation was recorded on June 18, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
From AI to data analysis and visualization, technology is reshaping the news. To discuss journalistic challenges presented by new technologies, CHM brought together Marian Chia-Ming Liu from the Washington Post, Jason Koebler from 404 Media, and Alex Reed from Mapping Black California. The conversation was moderated by David Yarnold, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News.
This event was recorded on April 16, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Is AI a threat to humanity or a partner with the power to unlock our full potential? Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Inflection AI and former board member of OpenAI shared his insights and hopes for the future in a conversation with Anne Dwane of Village Global.
This conversation was recorded on October 30, 2023, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Do Large Language Models like Chat GPT have the “sparks” of true intelligence, or are they merely “stochastic parrots,” lacking understanding and meaning. Hear a debate on this matter between University of Washington's computational linguist Emily Bender and OpenAI's Sébastien Bubeck. IEEE Spectrum Senior Editor Eliza Strickland moderates
This program was a partnership with IEEE Spectrum and was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
This conversation was recorded on March 25, 2025 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan joined KQED’s Rachael Myrow on stage to share insights from his new book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing).
This conversation was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and was a partnership with Silicon Valley Reads. It was recorded on March 11, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Over the last fifteen years, India has evolved from a primarily cash-based society to the country with the highest volume of digital payments in the world. Hear how this was accomplished from one of the primary architects of India’s digital public infrastructure, Pramod Varma, in a discussion with M.R. Rangaswami, the founder of Indiaspora, CEF, and Sand Hill Group.
This conversation was recorded on May 30, 2024, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Learn about the origin story of Bill Gates, one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age. In this episode Gates discusses his deeply personal new memoir, Source Code, in conversation with Patrick Collison, cofounder and CEO of Stripe.
This conversation was recorded on February 11, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Thirty years ago, Blizzard Entertainment spawned Warcraft, and then World of Warcraft a decade later, unleashing hordes of orcs and humans onto millions of fans' computer screens.
Many of those fans were in attendance at CHM Live on December 10, 2024, to hear New York Times bestselling author and Bloomberg News reporter Jason Schreier discuss his new book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, with CHM curator and gamer Hansen Hsu.
To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
In January 1984, Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh, an "insanely great" computer "for the rest of us" that changed the world—and Apple itself.
Moderated by tech journalist and author David Pogue, this anniversary event included three panels focused on the development, marketing and impact of the Mac.
Panel 1 (3:59): Mac Development Team members Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bruce Horn, and creator of the Mac icons and fonts Susan Kare.
Panel 2 (39:00): Marketing team members Andy Cunningham, Dan’l Lewin, and Mike Murray.
Panel 3 (1:06:57): Mac’s impact with the longest-serving Apple employee, Chris Espinosa, former Apple Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and tech journalist Steven Levy
This event was recorded live on January 24, 2024 (The Mac's 40th anniversary) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
AI expert and Stanford Professor Fei-Fei Li shares her experience and insights from more than two decades at the forefront of the field. Tech policy guru and current CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy Tom Kalil moderated the discussion, which was made possible by the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
This conversation was recorded on September 17, 2024 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California as a part of the CHM Live series. To watch a video of this program, please visit the Computer History Museum's YouTube channel.
To learn more about the Computer History Museum and our upcoming CHM Live events, visit our website at www.computerhistory.org
Listen to excerpts from upcoming episodes of Decoding Tech. Coming soon from the Computer History Museum!
Episodes are recorded at the museum's CHM Live series of events.
