Visionaries, Rebels and Machines
A podcast exploring the history of technology, from Edison's lightbulb to the birth of the cloud. Host Jamie Dobson, author of the book Visionaries, Rebels and Machines, examines the ideas, accidents, and breakthroughs that shaped our digital world. Each episode delves into themes like creativity, failure, and the journey from electrification to cloudification. It is a story of human ingenuity and the messy process of innovation.
Episodes
Only the Paranoid Survive
Intel is drowning in its own success: memory chips made Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove rich, then Japanese rivals like Fujitsu and Hitachi arrive with better DRAM, leaving Intel trapped in denial as recession bites and customers complain. In 1986, with losses mounting, Grove asks what new management would do, then makes the brutal leap to abandon memory, close plants and bet everything
Season 2 Episode 6
Intel invents a technology that will change the world, yet fails to see its true potential. As rivals close in and pressure mounts, Andy Grove develops the ruthless management playbook that still influences Silicon Valley today. Then a single business decision sparks one of the most consequential partnerships in technology history.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BO
The Accidental Invention That Made Intel Unstoppable
Intel nearly threw away the invention that changed the world. Meanwhile, Andy Grove was wrestling with a management experiment that could either save the company or break it. This episode reveals how a series of unlikely decisions helped shape the future of modern technology.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Downlo
Andy Grove's Nightmare: How Peter Drucker Saved Intel
From a failed digital watch to the philosophy that would remake modern management, this is the story of Andy Grove learning to lead when neither he nor Intel had a blueprint. It traces how fear, flawed products, difficult people and Peter Drucker’s ideas helped transform Grove from an anxious engineer into the architect of a new kind of high-tech company. And just when Intel begins to find its sys
The Cephalopod Problem
From fleeing war-torn Europe to walking into the heart of Silicon Valley, this is a story of survival turning into something much bigger. It traces how one outsider navigated identity, ambition, and opportunity to shape the modern tech world. And just when it feels like the journey settles, it sets up a mindset that would change how companies operate forever. Find out more about the Visionari
Survival Was the First System
A boy survives war and oppression, making impossible decisions just to stay alive. At the same time, a quiet breakthrough in technology is about to reshape the world. Their paths are worlds apart, yet they’re closer than you’d think.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions
Claude Shannon and the Creation of the Information Age
Before computers were machines, they were people crunching numbers by hand and making mistakes that shaped history. This episode uncovers how a scattered set of ideas about code, logic, and machines finally clicked into something world changing. And at the center of it all is one mind that quietly built the foundation for the digital world you live in today.Find out more about the Visionaries, Reb
The Generative AI Bubble Is Repeating a Much Darker History Than You Think
History is messier and darker than your textbooks ever told you, and this finale pulls no punches. It connects the telegraph, racism, and propaganda to the tech and algorithms shaping your world right now. If you think technology is neutral, this episode might change your mind.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Down
How cutting edge technology saved AT&T with a competitive advantage (and what that means in the age of Gen AI)
The telephone almost failed, and one stubborn manager is the reason it didn’t. Discover how Theodore Vail turned chaos into strategy, replacing lawyers with engineers and inventing a culture that lasted decades. This episode jumps from Victorian physics labs to courtroom battles, monopoly drama, and a tiny invention that changed everything.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:B
Edison and Tesla: Visionaries in Conflict
The legendary rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla makes for great internet drama, but almost none of it is true. In this bonus episode, Jamie Dobson digs into the historical record to separate fact from meme mythology, uncovering a story far more human and far more interesting than the fan-fiction version that dominates the web. From Paris workshops to New York dynamos, from mutual admi
Edison’s Lightbulb: The Invention that Shouldn’t Have Worked
A young inventor arrives in New York with almost nothing and decides to outshine the brightest mind of his era. What follows is a clash of egos, experiments, and shocking twists that shaped the future of electricity. This episode dives into the origins of the rivalry that would spark one of the greatest battles in tech history.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK H
Edison Made LIGHT Bulbs Extremely Profitable But Investors HATE Him?
A scruffy kid with a knack for telegraphs becomes the most famous inventor in America. A simple question about light turns into a race to rewrite the future. Hear how Thomas Edison went from hustling newspapers on trains to lighting up the world.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Ja
The Greatest Patent Heist: What the Telephone Dispute Teaches About Innovation
A scrunched-up letter pulled from a wastebasket. A race to the patent office with only hours to spare. In this episode, Jamie Dobson unpacks the explosive courtroom drama that decided who really invented the telephone. Was Alexander Graham Bell a visionary genius or a brilliant opportunist who stole Elisha Gray’s ideas? Tune in for a story of ambition, betrayal, and the shocking twist that rewrote
The Patent Heist that Defined Modern Tech Leadership
Discover how a sickly young Scot, sent to Canada to die, ended up inventing the telephone and changing the world. Was Alexander Graham Bell a genius inventor or just a lucky teacher in love with the right student? This episode dives into the love, rivalry, and surprising twists behind one of history’s most famous inventions.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInFind out more about the
What God Hath Wrought
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 HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast h
I Sing the Body Electric
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 V
Visionaries, Rebels and Machines Trailer
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
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