Bug in the System


IN OUR TRANSATLANTIC podcast collaboration, “The Secret History of the Future”, The Economist’s Tom Standage and Seth Stevenson of Slate unearth curious tales hidden in the history of technology, and ask what they can tell us about the future.

The first ever computer program was written in 1843 by Ada Lovelace, a mathematician who hoped her far-sighted treatise on mechanical computers would lead to a glittering scientific career. Today, as we worry that modern systems suffer from “algorithmic bias” against some groups of people, what can her program tell us about how software, and the people who make it, can go wrong? Runtime: 32 mins
