George Dyson: The Floating World

Best-selling author and science historian George Dyson spent his youth living in a treehouse on the water’s edge outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, building aluminum-frame kayaks based on the traditional Aleut design known by the Russian term “baidarka”. In this short documentary, Dyson discusses his years living in Canada and traveling by sea kayak along the Inside Passage. We follow him as he gives a presentation on traditional kayaks at the Alaska Native Day celebration at Fort Ross, California, an historic early 19th century Russian settlement.

Dyson is the author of BAIDARKA: THE KAYAK (1986), DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES (1997), PROJECT ORION: THE ATOMIC SPACESHIP 1957–1965 (2002), TURING’S CATHEDRAL (2012), and ANALOGIA: THE ENTANGLED DESTINIES OF NATURE, HUMAN BEINGS AND MACHINES (2020).