What do frog legs, cloud computing, and failure have in common?

They’re all part of the messy, magnificent story of how we got here.

I’m Jamie Dobson - author of Visionaries, Rebels and Machines — and in this podcast, I’ll take you on a journey through the ideas, accidents, and breakthroughs that shaped our digital world.

From Edison’s lightbulb moment to the birth of the cloud…

From the engineers who fled war to build machines of peace…

To the technologists today trying to teach machines to think.

This isn’t just the history of tech.

It’s the story of creativity, chaos — and the strange, beautiful way we fail our way forward.

Each episode, we’ll unpack the big themes that shaped humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification.

So if you’ve ever wondered how the web got weird,

why management matters more than machines,

or what the hell the cloud really is...

...you’re in the right place.

This is Visionaries, Rebels and Machines.

Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts and let’s take the long view of the future.

Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:

• BUY THE BOOK HERE
• Listen to more episodes of the podcast here.
• Download sample chapters here.
• Ask Jamie questions here.

Learn more about our people:

• Jamie Dobson: LinkedIn
• Join Jamie’s Substack

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on our YouTube Channel!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the real story behind Frankenstein began not in fiction, but in a London prison with a corpse and a few jolts of electricity? In this episode, Jamie Dobson uncovers how a strange 18th-century experiment led to one of the biggest scientific rivalries of all time. Discover how a twitching frog’s leg helped spark the invention of the battery we use in our world today.

Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:

• BUY THE BOOK HERE
• Listen to more episodes of the podcast here.
• Download sample chapters here.
• Ask Jamie questions here.

Learn more about our people:

• Jamie Dobson: LinkedIn
• Join Jamie’s Substack

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on our YouTube Channel!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A young artist loses everything and stumbles onto an idea that could make messages outrun horses and ships. Rival inventors, shaky demos, and a code of dots and dashes turn doubt into worldwide buzz. Hear how one line between cities rewired ambition, politics, and the way news travels.

Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:

• BUY THE BOOK HERE
• Listen to more episodes of the podcast here.
• Download sample chapters here.
• Ask Jamie questions here.

Learn more about our people:

• Jamie Dobson: LinkedIn
• Join Jamie’s Substack

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on our YouTube Channel!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.