Thermonuclear weapons would have been almost impossible to create had it not been for von Neumann’s brainchild. The fate of that machine was tied to them from its inception, because the race to build the bomb was accelerated by Johnny’s desire to build his computer, and the push to build the MANIAC was hastened by the nuclear arms race. It’s scary how science works. Just think about this for a second: the most creative and the most destructive of human inventions arose at exactly the same time. So much of the high-tech world we live in today, with its conquest of space and extraordinary
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