Look Who it Was Random video

W Daniel Hillis – Realising that I may be smarter than others (77/248)

621 views · Published 1 September 2017 · 1:21 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To listen to more of W Daniel Hillis’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PTERy4uxq92sWe

Born in 1956, US inventor, scientist, engineer and visionary W Daniel Hillis pioneered the concept of parallel computers and co-founded Thinking Machines and Applied Minds, which marked a new era in computing and established Hillis as a computing legend. [Listeners: Christopher Sykes and George Dyson; date recorded: 2016]

TRANSCRIPT: When I was a kid... I think I realised that... Well, I was different in so many different ways because I'd also lived so many different places, I knew different things. I mean, I knew I was smart but I also was knowledgeable in ways that the other... You know, I knew about things that... And I was also very lucky that I had, you know, scientists as parents. And so I lived in a bigger world than most of the kids I was around. Literally. So that was maybe the big difference.

And then I think when I went to MIT, I think until that semester I kind of assumed I was pretty average at MIT. But then when I realised that actually taking all those courses at once really wasn't that hard for me and everybody else was really surprised by it, and they really did have to study it. And it began to sink into me that, you know, maybe some of these things were easier for me than they were for the other students. But that took a while to kind of notice.

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