The origins of Eliza
Hello CoRecursive newsletter subscriber,
The Mystery of the Eliza Chatbot
It’s July now, and I have a new episode out here.
This episode is the story of Jeff Shrager, his connection with the famous chatbot Eliza, and his efforts to track down the original code.
Jeff is an enjoyable person to chat with, and I could tell when I first spoke to him that he’d be fun to interview but getting him on the show took a little convincing.
If you want to communicate the facts about a situation, it’s often best to not go directly at the facts but instead focus on the timeline – This happened, and then this happened, and you won’t believe what happened after that. If you do that right, then people get all the facts and the feelings, what it felt like to be part of things. At least, this is how I think about podcasting.
Trying to get that narrative version of a story out into audio has been something I’ve been slowly working on getting better at, and I think this episode about Eliza worked well. Of course, it doesn’t hurt either that it’s a wild story, and Jeff is a charismatic speaker. But let me know what you think of the episode! I’m sometimes wrong about these things.
80 Cols Feedback
The previous episode, “Why still 80 cols?” seems to be enjoyed by many. The main piece of feedback I got on it was from people who thought I should have come down stronger on the side of fixed-width code, and probably they had a point. Expect lots more Don and Krystal episodes in the future if only because it gives me an excuse to hang out with them.
Pateron Supporters
I also released a fun bonus episode for Patreon supporters about Developer Careers. I think this was the first solo, just Adam talking to a mic episode I’ve made, and I think it turned out pretty solid. You can find it here
Adam
Hi! I'm Adam Gordon Bell
Get a monthly update on my podcast, writing and whatever else I'm up to.
Adam Gordon Bell May 2nd Hey! Do you recognize this man? Well, he has some things to teach us about learning in the latest episode: https://corecursive.com/the-power-of-context/ Todays' podcast episode is about how to learn hard things. Guest Steve Krouse ( not pictured ) was a struggling student when he joined an after school program based around programming and some revolutionary teaching methods. That after school program changed his life in pretty profound ways. Today's episode is all...
Adam Gordon Bell April 2nd Hey! I have a new podcast episode out about this graph: I know that doesn't sound exciting, but it actually is! https://corecursive.com/briffa-sep98-e/ That is a famous climate change graph that caused a lot of controversy, with newspapers and news shows accusing scientists of fraud and deception. While scientists claimed they were victims of a targeted attack. I got a little obsessed with what actually happened. It happened 15 years ago, but the code is still out...
Adam Gordon Bell Oct 2nd Hey! I have a new podcast episode is out: https://corecursive.com/one-million-checkboxes-with-nolen-royalty/ It's at the intersection of coding, game building, art and online trolls. That is to say it's a super fun episode about building something and having it become really really huge and all the unexpected things that follow. But it's also about how the internet used to be more fun, and how Nolen Royalty is trying to bring us back to the era of Boaty McBoatface I...