It is now easier to breach the security of people’s personal and business lives than perhaps at any time in recent human history. Technology has brought unimaginable speed, scale and reach to hackers. This lecture looks at the consequences of technology on privacy and security, and considers what options there are for the future, including new technologies and regulations such as blockchain and the right to privacy. A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-security Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website. Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege

Networks were seen as a rather arcane and dull area in computer science. Then along came the internet, and everything changed for ever. The internet is actually an amalgam of a number of disparate technologies that evolved at just the right time, indeed several of the key technologies were far from optimal. In this lecture we will look at a bit of internet history, show how it works now and look towards the future. A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/networks-beyond Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

Even the most humdrum of electrical devices nowadays contains at least one computer; yet surprisingly few people are aware of their history, their form or function. In this talk we will see that not only is the history of computers rich and diverse, their architecture likewise. Astonishingly, all the computers ever made can be modelled by one universal machine – the Turing machine. A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-history Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

Niklaus Wirth said Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. But programs are more than that. They are ubiquitous in modern life, but only a tiny minority of the population know how to program. Programmers, coders or developers are therefore seen as the most rarefied of individuals – disconnected from society yet with enormous influence and power. This lecture examines what programming is, who invented it, and how it is changing to better represent the needs of modern society. A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/programs-intro Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

Data structures are the critical ingredient of all good information systems. Poor data structures lead to horrendous problems of interoperability and nightmarish complexity; good ones can make the ‘uncomputable’ computable. Structure and order would seem to be particularly important in the problems of “Big data.” However, is this changing? One of the exciting developments is systems, such as Google, which handle unstructured data. Are they the future? A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/data-future Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website. Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreshamCollege Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege/

Algorithms, loosely translated, are systems for doing things. Algorithms are thus the link from pre-history to the modern world – without algorithms we would have an inanimate universe without all the mess and complexity of real life. It turns out that the history of algorithms is messy. There are also general theories of algorithms, and those ideas are not messy at all; they are very beautiful, powerful and should be required reading for the internet age. A lecture by Richard Harv The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/algorithms-intro Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

This lecture will review the tricky alliance between social media, email and the government. How are we going to tame the trolls of social media? A lecture by Richard Harvey, IT Livery Company Professor of Information Technology 26 November 2019 6PM GMT https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/taming-the-trolls Barely a day goes by without some lunatic assertion on social media.  And thinking-people shake their heads, but what can be done about this?  It turns out that there are a variety of scientific and engineering approaches which might be adapted to tame the trolls of social media.  In this lecture we will review the tricky alliance between social media, email and the government, and we will present options for the future in which, possibly, the benefits of social media might been to outweigh the negatives.

This lecture examines the phenomenon of computer vision. How do you build a computer vision system and what can we expect for the future? A lecture by Richard Harvey, IT Livery Company Professor of IT, 12 February 2019 https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-vision Human vision seems so effortless: from a young age we see the world in high- definition colour. We can tell the difference between a cat and a hat, and ‘The man who mistook his wife for a hat’ is an anomaly. But despite recent progress, machines still confuse wives for hats. In this lecture, we will examine the phenomenon of computer vision, show how to build a computer vision system and discuss the expectations for the future. Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreshamCollege Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege/