325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

The world is becoming pixelated. As computers and other digital devices become ubiquitous, human knowledge and communication and information is gradually being converted into, and manipulated as, strings of bits. What does that really mean, and what are the ramifications going forward? Alvy Ray Smith is a computer scientist, co-founder of Pixar, and author of A Biography of the Pixel. We go through the journey of how he helped make computer animation a reality, and the implications of what he calls the "Great Digital Convergence."

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/08/18/325-alvy-ray-smith-on-pixar-pixels-and-the-great-digital-convergence/

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Alvy Ray Smith received a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He has been a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at New York University, a member of the Computer Graphics Lab at the NY Institute of Technology, director of computer graphics at Lucasfilm, and cofounder of Pixar and Altamira. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the America Association for the Advancement of Science as well as the American Society of Genealogists. He is the winner of two technical Academy Awards.

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