The release of the film by Osnabruecker director Peter Haas, is a latest on depicting the life of Joseph Weizenbaum, the inventor of ELIZA. Besides being a professional computer scientist and a professor at the MIT for life, J. Weizenbaum is also kind of a moral authority concerning computers and their use in today’s society. Read more and watch trailer >>
A hilarious story-teller adds numerous anecdotes, memories and ideas to a novel which he calls his life. Joseph Weizenbaum lives in Berlin-Mitte with a view of the Marx-Engels-Forum and the Berlin Cathedral. After many years in the USA, he returned to Berlin. Born in Berlin and of jewish origin, Weizenbaum and his family left Germany in 1936. In the early years of the computer age, he went to California. There he started his scientific career and later became a professor at the elite MIT. But Weizenbaum was a rebel: he began to criticise his colleagues for their fantasies of almightiness and their devoutness to science and militarism. The film provides a stage for his humorous narrative depicting the world of yesterday while reflecting on the dawn of the computer age. source
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