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Gell-Mann Amnesia

Out of curiosity, can you give a recent example of a video from Computerphile that was incorrect?




That's it! Thanks!

Recent videos? I haven't watched it in a while. But looking now, I immediately found an example, because the problems are always with the history. In the video below [1], the guy absolutely mangles the story of the byte and why it's 8 bits long. He turns what was a fuckup in the launch of the System/360, into some urban legend of IBM's technical superiority and vision.

"IBM said, 'Let's be brave! 8 bit characters!'"

FFS, no. IBM said (in summary), "Crap, we really wanted to use 7 bit ASCII - an evolution of the 6 bit teleprinter code, since we're on the federal standards committee, but ASCII peripherals won't be ready in time for the System/360 launch, so uh, let's use this 8 bit extension to our old 6 bit punch cards instead and wing it." It turned out to be a massive blunder. [2]

The System/360 still succeeded and its success meant a bunch of software was written for it, which all assumed an 8 bit byte, competitors copied IBM, and the rest of the market followed, but it took a decade or so. There's lots of fun stuff in the actual story - including the rich history of today's character standards which goes all the way back to the telegraph - to summarize without making things up.

1. https://youtu.be/ixJCo0cyAuA

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20180513204153/http://www.bobbem...


I know you're asking about Computerphile, but this video explains how one of the Numberphile videos is wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIIjLr6vUA


none of it is incorrect - it's just lacking in details that only someone in the field would see.

Numberphile probably has less "inaccuracies" - because maths can probably be summarized easier to the layman than computer science.




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