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Hello Outriders!

On the podcast I have been talking to a woman who has helped to bring some online organisation to those who affected by the earthquake in Turkey, I learned something about mathematics and Bach and we remember a few of the people who are important to us every time we use a computer.

The news headlines, practically world-wide, marked the passing of Steve Jobs not so long ago. I think most people would agree that he has been an enormous influence on the way we think about portable computing especially.

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It has been a sad year for those who have helped to form our relationships with machines. Though it may not have made such big headlines, I think it is important to note a couple of other people who influenced our technical lives. John McCarthy and Dennis Ritchie.

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If you've considered robots coming alive or thought that the new Siri application on the iphone was lifelike, then you may have even found yourself thinking about Ai - or artificial intelligence. If you thought about Ai, then you have the American computer scientist, John McCarthy to thank.

Artificial Intelligence is the science and engineering for the creation of intelligent machines or software. It was John McCarthy who coined that phrase in a proposal for a conference in 1955.

John McCarthy was also the inventor of LISP, the programming language. It was designed in 1958 and although it did see a bit of a decline, it is still popular today in open source communities. It's also one of the earliest computer programming languages and so naturally it's had a great influence on how other languages and computing processes work.

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2011 is quite a sobering year when you think about the innovators we will miss. Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language and with Ken Thompson he also created the UNIX operating system. C is a general purpose programming language - developed at the end of the 60s and early 70s for use with the Unix system.

C is pretty much one of the most used computer programming languages ever. Still today there are very few computers that work without a C compiler. It also has an effect on other programming languages like Python, Perl and PHP. It is also regarded by some programmers to be a really good starting point for kids or adults who would like to learn.

It's not just about the work that they did at the time, but the legacy that Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy left for us today. Hopefully many of the Outriders we speak with each week will also have in mind the way that future generations will work with their programming or mathematics.

Turkish networking

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Clean up efforts are continuing in Van in Turkey after the earthquake that happened on October 23rd. Turkey saw similar devastation in 1999 when it was hit by another earthquake. , a professor of politics at NYU and also a PhD student at the same department remembered that quake in the 90s and this galvanized her response to work with others to create an that has been helping a great many people.

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Mathematics in sound

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Outriders are no doubt familiar with the fact that mathematics can be very beautiful and , is a designer at Google creative lab as well as doing interactive work with music and visuals *and* he is a resident artist at Eyebeam dot org at the moment. He told me how he created beautiful audio visuals mathematically.

If you are creating something amazing on the web then get in touch. You can always email me at Outriders at bbc dot co dot uk, tweet at me on Twitter where we are or indeed find us on Facebook at for further discussion on the weekly interviews.

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Until next week!

~ Jamillah