Dame Wendy Hall

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the computer scientist Dame Wendy Hall. Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, she fought long and hard to prove that her type of web science was highly significant and here to stay.

Presenter0:50

If algebraic topology and open hypermedia systems really aren't your thing, then don't worry. Dame Wendy is also in demand as a brilliant communicator on what can seem to outsiders to be impenetrable topics.

Presenter1:02

Her parents were from humble beginnings, and it was clear from the get go that their first born had a budding flair for numbers. Aged just six, she was charged with teaching a group of schoolmates maths. The first in her family to go to university, she rejected Cambridge, judging it too stuffy.

Presenter1:20

She says, I get too excited about stuff. I love my life and am passionate about web science, women in science, and shopping.

Presenter1:28

Uh you claim that if you weren't a computer scientist then, Wendy Hall, uh you would be a personal shopper. And I wonder if this is a a canny technique to stop people feeling rather intimidated by your vast capabilities and your brain. Is it? To make you more approachable?

Dame Wendy Hall1:42

Possibly, but I am very much a people person. I could have been an events organiser as well, I think.

Dame Wendy Hall1:48

I just enjoy social events and enjoy making people happy, I suppose.

Presenter1:52

You're a people person, as you say. You're a very vibrant person. You come in here today just fizzing with energy. A lot of people think that computers somehow, as we increase our use of them, they distance us from the people part of life. You're somebody who would argue forcibly against that.

Dame Wendy Hall2:02

Yeah from

Dame Wendy Hall2:05

Absolutely. I mean, we do need people who can write software and be intense programmers. Absolutely we do. But it's all about how we use them, how we interact with them and how they enable us to do things we couldn't do before. Just like the social networks. I mean, all that's been built by people who write software. And look what we do with the social networks with Facebook and Twitter and it's just amazing. And I'm really keen to get more people to study science and engineering and to make people see that this is you know, you can change the world by being a scientist or an engineer. Is it true that you get your husband to set up the computer?

Presenter2:38

Their systems at home.

Dame Wendy Hall2:39

Yes, absolutely. Why? Well, because I don't like the detail. I've never actually been a programmer. I've done it and I've taught it, but it's not what I enjoy doing with my spare time. And I just work on a need-to-know basis with this technology. So I have people at work that set up my machines at work, and my husband does our computing at home. It's all Dean When.

Presenter3:02

They're all as we know then, passionate about science and computer science in particular, passionate about style. You love music too. When it came to picking this list today and when it comes to listening to music in general, what is it you want from music?

Dame Wendy Hall3:17

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall3:18

I want to be able to sing along with it. I want to tap my foot. I want to dance. I just want to get in it. Tell me about the first track then.

Dame Wendy Hall3:26

Well, we're starting with all this music, especially, but things we said today by the Beatles. I.

Dame Wendy Hall3:33

uh was one of the archetypal Beatles fans.

Dame Wendy Hall3:37

In 1964, when A Hard Day's Night, the film and the album came out.

Dame Wendy Hall3:41

I was twelve and I was desperately in love with Paul McCartney. So I wanted something very special. It had to be written by Paul and sung by Paul, but be of the Beatles. This this was the B side to the Hard Days Night single, and I think the words are something that I would want to hear on a desert island.

Speaker 44:02

You say you will love me if I have to go

Speaker 44:09

You'll be thinking of me Somehow I will know

Speaker 44:16

Someday when I'm lonely, Wishing you weren't so far away, then I will remember things we said today.

Presenter4:28

That was the Beatles and things we said today. Let's talk for a moment then, Dame Wendy Hall, about something called the Webb Observatory. Yes, you look excited already. It's a way of mapping the digital planet. What on earth does that mean?

Dame Wendy Hall4:38

And it it's

Dame Wendy Hall4:43

Well, um, we create the web.

Dame Wendy Hall4:47

We create it because we write content to it, and Google's and Facebook's and Twitter only work because of what we do with them.

Dame Wendy Hall4:55

And my argument is that in order to understand how it evolves, we need to be constantly observing what's happening. And it's a hard problem, I I admit that. But if you think about how the climate scientists, environmental scientists work, you have meteorologists all around the world taking the temperature, measuring the depth of the oceans.

Dame Wendy Hall5:15

And all that information is collected day in, day out and then shared by the scientists to build the models and the simulations of what we're doing to the physical planet and what we might do to make it better in the future.

Dame Wendy Hall5:27

And my argument is that the digital planet is as important for us to.

Dame Wendy Hall5:33

Conserve and build for the good of humanity as the physical planet.

Dame Wendy Hall5:38

And in order to understand how it evolves, we need to be constantly.

Dame Wendy Hall5:43

observing what's happening. This is not a surveillance. This is not about Big Brother. This is about observing the trends, observing what the masses are doing and how they're interacting with the technology.

Presenter5:54

Well, let me just ask you then for a moment about the things that are very current. Earlier this year, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that.

Presenter6:01

We should have the right to have historical information expunged from the World Wide Web.

Speaker 46:04

Store

Speaker 46:05

SpongeBob

Speaker 46:07

Yes.

Dame Wendy Hall6:07

Uh

Dame Wendy Hall6:08

Yes.

Presenter6:09

I wonder it some people might think it's desirable, but but is that even realistic?

Dame Wendy Hall6:13

It's a really hard issue. Forgetting is really important to us in our you know, when you have traumatic events or you break up with someone, you move on, you and all the things you hide from your families. Do you really want to know what you did on October the sixth, nineteen eighty one? Do you want to always remember those awful days? Or do you want your family, your descendants, future historians to be able to know that about you?

Dame Wendy Hall6:40

Yes, the Web is now twenty five years old and it's mature, and we've really got to start coming to grips with these issues as a society. And I personally find it very exciting as a challenge, but it is a real challenge for society.

Presenter6:55

Let's uh have some more music then, Wendy Hall. Tell me about your second of the day. What are we going to hear now?

Dame Wendy Hall7:00

As I transitioned from school to university, a very exciting well, my life's exciting, I but a very exciting time of my life. As the Beatles broke up, I got very into heavy metal and I had to choose one of them. And oh, which one was I going to choose? And this to me, smoke on the water, deep purple,

Dame Wendy Hall7:18

I can really imagine getting into this on the desert island.

Speaker 37:23

On the water, a fire in the sky.

Speaker 37:30

Small come the boards and come.

Presenter7:51

That was Deep Purple and Smoke on the Water. You were born then, Wendy Hall, in nineteen fifty two in London. We're going to go from the macro, the big web stuff, to the micro now. Tell me about your parents. They were very religious people.

Dame Wendy Hall8:02

Oh, well, more than that, uh, yes, they were. They were very uh strong Church of England people. My father sang in the choir, played the organ, my mother organised the Mothers' Union and they they were very r uh religious, but they didn't it wasn't um it didn't push it down our throats. They're a wonderful people and actually my life was determined really. I'm a baby boomer and we were coming out of the Second World War when I was born and my my

Dame Wendy Hall8:25

Parents' lives were very much defined by their experiences in the war, and they were determined that their children would have a better start to life than they had had in that sense.

Presenter8:35

Tell me about life at home then. What what did your dad do?

Dame Wendy Hall8:37

He was um an accountant, but because he had uh gone into the Air Force in at nineteen, in nineteen thirty nine, he didn't have any real qualifications.

Presenter8:39

The big

Dame Wendy Hall8:47

They lost out on so much that generation.

Dame Wendy Hall8:49

So he never was a qualified accountant, but he ended up with a very good job with a big company.

Presenter8:54

And so as a little girl, I mean I mentioned in the introduction, it was irresistible to me that this idea of you as a little girl very early on being spotted as somebody who was great with numbers, probably like your dad was great with numbers.

Dame Wendy Hall9:04

Yes. In fact, my mother always tells the story that when they went to their first parents' evening in my primary school, so I would have been five.

Dame Wendy Hall9:12

um the teacher said, uh Wendy will go to university. Now my parents I nobody in the family had ever been to university. There was no idea that you know their children would go to university.

Dame Wendy Hall9:24

It was just that I'm I was very bright and and top of the class and good at mathematics and I'm a good teacher and it just came across even then really.

Presenter9:32

Uh

Dame Wendy Hall9:32

I

Presenter9:32

And you enjoy the responsibility then of teachers saying to you there's a little maths group here that Wendy you can sit with them and explain how it's done.

Dame Wendy Hall9:39

It just sorta came naturally.

Presenter9:41

Did it? The leadership thing came naturally.

Dame Wendy Hall9:43

Yeah. Yeah, I like helping people. I like helping people to learn.

Presenter9:46

And as a little girl, what else did you enjoy doing?

Dame Wendy Hall9:49

Brownies, I remember Brownies. I belonged to every club that was going, I suppose, and I've always had a great social life.

Dame Wendy Hall9:56

And anything I join, I always end up organizing. What badges did you get at Pronies? Oh, gosh, music, definitely. Um, first aid. Gosh, yes. Did you have a

Presenter10:04

Read a

Presenter10:08

Did you have were you one of those girls with onneep sleeves?

Dame Wendy Hall10:08

Those bows on the lots, yeah, absolutely.

Presenter10:11

I did quite like you up until then.

Dame Wendy Hall10:14

No, I think I only had one sleeve.

Presenter10:16

Let's have some more music then. Tell me about what we're going to hear next, your third of the day.

Dame Wendy Hall10:20

I wanted to have a female voice. I realized when I was picking that there are a lot of male voices, and I'm very much a feminist and someone who enjoys women's networks, although of course I love the company of men and I work in a world that's all men. So I wanted a female voice and I wanted um a strong one and a strong song.

Dame Wendy Hall10:40

And I picked Skyfall and Adele because it's a wonderful song, beautifully sung, and it celebrates fifty years of the James Bond genre of films, and my husband and I have got such pleasure from going to the the cinema to see those movies.

Speaker 410:57

Let the sky fall and he crumbles.

Speaker 411:03

We will stand tall and face it all.

Speaker 411:08

Together let the sky fall

Speaker 411:12

When it comes, we will stand tall and face it all together as sky falls.

Presenter11:27

So that was Adele and Skyfall. You said to me during that day in Wendy Hall that you missed out one of your reasons for choosing it, which was there's a Daniel Craig factor.

Dame Wendy Hall11:34

Yes, I could uh sit on the desert island and dream about Daniel Craig coming out of the water to rescue me.

Presenter11:40

And I'm

Dame Wendy Hall11:40

Uh

Presenter11:40

Um we were also chatting during that piece of music about the brownies, and you were a sixer, I found out, but you didn't go on to be a girl guide. Why not?

Dame Wendy Hall11:45

Fan die b

Dame Wendy Hall11:48

I'd discovered boys by then. Yeah. I started going to the Church Youth Club rather than the Guides.

Dame Wendy Hall11:54

And had voice friends. Yes, and didn't have time for

Presenter11:56

Yeah, yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall11:57

Okay.

Presenter11:57

Yes. Were you a good girl? Were you a prefect and all that?

Dame Wendy Hall12:00

Uh, well, yes, I was until I got a bit rebellious in my uh sixth form, much to the surprise and of my parents. And I sort of led the rebellion, but went a bit socialist around that time and led the rebellion that we were all equal and we shouldn't have prefects.

Dame Wendy Hall12:15

And my headmistress is quite a character and I think she decided that for my year we she just let that happen and we didn't have prefects and as soon as we left they they had them again.

Presenter12:25

Was this the same headmistress that told you you shouldn't go into medicine? Yes. Yes. Tell me about that conversation.

Dame Wendy Hall12:30

So I wanted to be a medic. I'd always wanted to be involved in medicine from an early age, and I was choosing my A levels, and I wanted to choose the A levels so I could do medicine.

Dame Wendy Hall12:40

And she just said, Well, medicine's not a career for women.

Dame Wendy Hall12:44

Which actually, of course, in the s late sixties it wasn't. There were hardly any women in medicine. And she said, You're a natural mathematician. You should go to Cambridge and study mathematics.

Dame Wendy Hall12:55

And she may have been right. I don't know if I'd be sitting here today if I'd gone into medicine in the seventies.

Presenter13:01

So, you did go on to university. We'll talk a little bit about the university you chose later. But that word of pure mathematics at its highest level, can you explain to somebody like me? You know what I'm saying?

Dame Wendy Hall13:03

Yeah.

Presenter13:13

Where is the simulation? When things become so theoretical, and you are such a people person, where do the two meet?

Dame Wendy Hall13:17

And

Dame Wendy Hall13:21

That's interesting. The int the pure mathematics, the easiest way to describe it is I was happier and I am happier thinking in n dimensions than thinking in three dimensions.

Speaker 413:30

Right.

Dame Wendy Hall13:31

I've got that.

Speaker 413:31

I've got that.

Dame Wendy Hall13:32

That's pure mathematics, where you're thinking in a world that doesn't actually exist.

Dame Wendy Hall13:38

And

Dame Wendy Hall13:40

Actually, mathematics is quite a lonely discipline, especially the pure mathematics, because it's really just you and your brain and a piece of paper and a pencil is enough for pure mathematics because it's about deep thought.

Presenter13:54

Yes.

Dame Wendy Hall13:54

Really deep thought. And my PhD thesis had nineteen references, I think, whereas your typical PhD thesis has hundreds, because there were so few people in the world studying that topic.

Dame Wendy Hall14:07

But it would take me a month to read a paper in my field because you've got to really deeply understand what's going on. And I used to be able to look at the algebra and it was a pattern. I could look at the algebra and say I understand what that's saying.

Dame Wendy Hall14:22

40 years later, I can't do that. I've lost that ability. But I still think in an abstract way, and I think that's been a huge benefit in my career.

Presenter14:31

Let's have some more music, Dame Windy Hall. We're on your fourth of the morning. Why have you chosen this?

Dame Wendy Hall14:32

When

Dame Wendy Hall14:35

Okay, so this is Emerson, Lake and Palmer. At university, I saw them several times. I actually would like to take a whole album, but I had to pick a track. And so I picked one that is just so s so stirring and so get up and go, it'll make me get up and go on the island. So it's fanfare for the common man.

Presenter15:25

That was fanfare for the common man, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. So, uh Wendy Hall, you uh finished your PhD 197. You then of course started applying for jobs.

Dame Wendy Hall15:33

You then

Presenter15:36

One of the first jobs you applied for was to teach maths to what would, I guess, mainly have been a class of male engineers. And what was the response to that application?

Dame Wendy Hall15:42

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall15:46

I applied for its job to teach maths.

Dame Wendy Hall15:48

uh to engineers. And I went and the interview this was nineteen seventy seven, the interview panel was all men. And at the end of the interview the head of department came out and he said to me, Wendy, you haven't got the job. I wanted to give it to you, but the rest of the panel didn't because you're a woman.

Dame Wendy Hall16:02

And actually, what he meant was that the panel didn't think I could control a class of largely male engineers.

Presenter16:07

Um you did then go on to get a job at Oxford Brookes Univers uh Polytechnic as it was at the time.

Dame Wendy Hall16:10

Teaching maths to engineers, funnily enough. And tell me then about your first

Presenter16:17

Brush with uh with personal computers.

Dame Wendy Hall16:20

It was, um, just into the eighties. And by that time I'd moved I only taught at uh Oxford Polly for one year and then I moved back to Southampton because I was getting married and Pete had a job in Southampton and

Dame Wendy Hall16:33

I got a job at what was then a teach training college. I was teaching maths and the math head of the maths department, who was a really great guy, he said, Wendy, you're you're teaching maths, you must be able to do computing. I bought this Commodore pet sitting in the cupboard, but not doing anything with it. You you know, can you run a class on basic programming next year?

Dame Wendy Hall16:50

And I took it home that summer and I taught myself basic programming. And it fired you up, did it? No, not really. Not at that point. It was a bit later, in fact when the BBCB computer came out, you could get graphics on that. And we started to play with getting pictures and even video. And that's when I started to get fired up. I'd gone to the university then as a computer scientist. I went back there in 1984.

Dame Wendy Hall17:13

And we s started getting into this world. We bought video displays and we had BBCBs and

Dame Wendy Hall17:19

We were the first

Dame Wendy Hall17:21

Possibly in the world, but certainly in the UK, to write the software you need to get the video onto the Apple Mac computer.

Presenter17:28

Friends and family, when you said you're doing a master's in computer science and they sort of looked at you, what did they say? Did they say, what is that?

Dame Wendy Hall17:37

Come on, I'd already done a PhD in pure mathematics.

Dame Wendy Hall17:40

God's

Presenter17:40

That's again this as well.

Dame Wendy Hall17:40

Again, they say it's this.

Dame Wendy Hall17:45

And that got me, doing that Masters in Computer Science enabled me to get the job at Southampton as a computer scientist.

Presenter17:52

You've mentioned uh, you know, boyfriends and you've mentioned the fact that you were getting married. For some women it it it's guys with blond hair, for others it's, you know, guys with brown eyes. For you it it seems to be physicists.

Dame Wendy Hall18:04

What is it about physicists? I've no idea.

Presenter18:04

What is it about physicists?

Dame Wendy Hall18:08

I think actually physicists are very clever people and they can be quite fun. I met Pete at the university when we were doing our PhDs.

Dame Wendy Hall18:18

And uh suddenly he was a person who didn't have an ego and supported me in everything I wanted to do.

Presenter18:25

Have some more music, Wendy Hall. What's next? We're on your fifth. Tell me about this.

Dame Wendy Hall18:28

You've led very nicely into this. I learnt about music from my father, who was a singer and a piano player, and he sang in the London Philharmonic Choir, and we often used to go to the Albert Hall and big churches to hear him sing.

Dame Wendy Hall18:41

And when we were planning the wedding, what am I going to walk down the aisle to? And he suggested the arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Hand or Solomon Oratorio.

Dame Wendy Hall18:51

And I said, Oh no, I thought that sounded a bit naff, the Queen of Sheba. And he said, Wendy, it's absolutely beautiful. Have you listened to it? It will be perfect for you.

Dame Wendy Hall19:00

So I walked down the aisle on his arm.

Dame Wendy Hall19:02

To marry my wonderful husband Peter.

Presenter20:09

That was part of Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, played there by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. Um I want to ask you about this system. Now, I don't want to get this wrong. You can explain it to you in a second. It was something that you and your team at Southampton were responsible for. It was called Microcosm.

Dame Wendy Hall20:27

Yep.

Presenter20:27

Explain to me what it was and what you did that was so pioneering and important, because it was.

Dame Wendy Hall20:32

Well, first of all, it does it predates the web, but not the internet. But this was the late 80s when I was beginning to see the potential of what we call multimedia now.

Presenter20:41

So it's clicking links.

Dame Wendy Hall20:42

Watching content. It's all that thing we do in the world.

Presenter20:42

It's all that thing we do in all the time.

Dame Wendy Hall20:47

Now we do that all the time because of the web today. But in those days, it was research labs only. It was very pioneering. So we set about designing a system.

Dame Wendy Hall20:58

that would enable people to create links between lots of different multimedia content. And we ha I had this idea that the links should be separate from the documents. So you might link your name to a picture of you and say, this is a picture of Kirstie. That's the semantic relationship, rather than just a pointer to another file.

Dame Wendy Hall21:17

And in an essence that was the pioneering piece.

Dame Wendy Hall21:20

We first demoed that system in 1989. I came back from the most wonderful sabbatical in University of Michigan Ann Arbor with lots of ideas.

Dame Wendy Hall21:29

And nineteen eighty nine was the year that Tim Berners-Lee specified the web to his bosses in CERN. So it was all happening at the same time, but our system was out there before there was a web.

Presenter21:39

Did it feel tangibly exciting? Did you feel like you were at the forefront?

Dame Wendy Hall21:42

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Presenter21:43

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall21:44

I just knew this was the way the world was going to go. I didn't think about the mobile devices we might have. I just knew that

Dame Wendy Hall21:52

The idea that we'd have machines that would help us find information

Dame Wendy Hall21:57

From a global network of computers was going to revolutionize everything.

Presenter22:02

I read you say that you didn't so much face a glass ceiling as a glass wall. What do you mean by that?

Dame Wendy Hall22:08

Oh, well, I sort of. I did. I think I faced several glass ceilings. I mean, you know.

Dame Wendy Hall22:13

In the eighties it was really hard in the world of science and engineering then to succeed as a woman. Also in the university world as well. I I remember when I was put on my first committee at the university and I walked in and I was the only woman I was yet still then a young lecturer.

Dame Wendy Hall22:30

And I walked into the room, and it was full of men, and the chair was an engineering professor, and he said, Oh, look up, lads, there's a woman in the room.

Dame Wendy Hall22:38

You know, and you think

Dame Wendy Hall22:39

Oh, okay. Well, what are you going to do if I'm not here? Tell dirty jokes? I don't know.

Dame Wendy Hall22:43

And, you know, then I was the first female professor of engineering at Southampton. I had a lot of support from my from the dean at the time. But then I was the only female professor of engineering for ages. But now I feel I've got through some of the glass ceilings but there's still a wall. I still see rooms that are full of men that I can't get into.

Presenter23:03

So

Dame Wendy Hall23:04

Yeah.

Presenter23:05

Even though you're a member of the Royal Society, and so on and so on.

Dame Wendy Hall23:07

Well, the number of times you you still see a meeting, not just in my world of engineering, but in big business, in government, in there's so many worlds where it's still a room full of men.

Dame Wendy Hall23:19

Uh but that's when I count my blessings of picking the right partner.

Dame Wendy Hall23:23

Because

Dame Wendy Hall23:25

You know, I go home and Pete is is just there for me to support me, talk it through. We're both scientists and he wants me to do well.

Presenter23:34

Time for some music, Wendy Hall. Um this is your sixth choice.

Dame Wendy Hall23:38

So this is we're in the eighties now and this is when we were having a wonderful time, beginning to earn money, bought our first house and we went to lots of concerts. And this is Genesis and memories of their invisible touch tour. And I've picked the Brazilian because I just think it's the most amazing track and it's not the obvious one.

Presenter24:30

That was Genesis and the Brazilian and memories for you, Dame Wendy Hall, of happy days, concert going as an early married couple. You painted that picture very nicely of the new house and a little bit of money to buy concert tickets and all those optimistic beginnings together. The Facebook CO Sheryl Sandberg says that she wants her daughter not just to succeed but also to be liked for her accomplishments. And I'm wondering if throughout the years all your optimism and goodwill has taken a few knocks. Do you get the feeling that at times you have been resented by people for your accomplishments?

Speaker 424:35

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall24:35

early married couple you

Dame Wendy Hall24:41

Nope.

Dame Wendy Hall24:51

But I'm wondering

Dame Wendy Hall24:59

Oh, definitely. And of course I think men will find um the fact that you know we talk about getting more women onto boards or into positions of power, that threatens men because there's less places for them. And also a strong, confident woman is threatening in some ways.

Dame Wendy Hall25:17

But I um I never wanted to get anything other than on merit.

Presenter25:21

And what about the idea that women are not going to close the achievement gap until they close the ambition gap? That women actually have to really want it as much as many men appear to want it in order for them to present to all those top positions?

Dame Wendy Hall25:28

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall25:29

Much as

Dame Wendy Hall25:31

Or different.

Dame Wendy Hall25:32

Almost.

Dame Wendy Hall25:34

There's a confidence thing.

Dame Wendy Hall25:36

And I mean, actually, women are sometimes very sensitive about this, and they look at that world and they think, actually, I don't want to be part of this. There's I want to do other things with my life.

Dame Wendy Hall25:46

Because there's a lot of ego, there's a lot of late night, lots of networking that you know women just might not be interested in doing generally. And the competition factor too. Many women just can't be asked to worry about always constantly being in competition.

Presenter26:02

Um, a long and happy marriage, and you've you've not had children. Do you think the fact that you haven't maybe been distracted by that has also helped you really put your foot on the gas with your work?

Dame Wendy Hall26:10

Yes,'cause I'm put on the a pedestal as a role model for women, but I haven't had children, so I've never had to think about that career gap.

Dame Wendy Hall26:19

and how to handle it.

Dame Wendy Hall26:21

Try to be very sympathetic and empathetic. And of course, I mean, I encourage women to have families and work, but I.

Dame Wendy Hall26:29

I didn't really want children, so it wasn't that I made a sacrifice, but I made a conscious decision that if I was going to succeed in my career,

Dame Wendy Hall26:36

I needed to motor on during the thirties and the early forties, and I don't think I could have achieved what I have if I'd had children, because I'm always a great enthusiast for everything, and if I'd had children I would have put everything into that, and I just don't think I could have done both.

Presenter26:53

And did you talk to your husband about saying, you know what, the the nourishment I get from my work, the stimulation and the fact that we're in this together is more to me than the thought of having kids. Did you actually have those conversations?

Dame Wendy Hall26:58

Stimulus

Dame Wendy Hall27:05

Yes, absolutely. And I I always said that if he wanted children, then I'd give it a go. Right?

Dame Wendy Hall27:11

But he didn't either. So why would we change our whole lives for something neither so sure we wanted?

Presenter27:17

Why, indeed. Let's have some more music, Dame Wendy. We are on your seventh. I can't believe it already. Here we are.

Dame Wendy Hall27:22

Uh

Dame Wendy Hall27:23

Happy.

Presenter27:23

Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall27:24

Such fun. I had to have something from Eric. We have had such pleasure from listening to Eric Clapton's music. And I think there's a sweepstake on at work as to what songs I'm picking. And everyone will think I'm going to take Wonderful Tonight because that's my signature karaoke song. But actually, I'm picking Layla because I think it's a better song and it's real classic love song.

Speaker 427:49

Give you consolation.

Speaker 428:11

Look at dialogue, please.

Speaker 428:15

Dollar Mokey!

Presenter28:21

That was Eric Clapton and Leila. And so, Dame Wendy Hall, um, fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society both. Um, you're also in a band.

Presenter28:32

Do you sing, Layla, in the band?

Dame Wendy Hall28:33

No, it's so wonderful tonight. Um we had a band when I was a young lecturer and the band was called No Talent Required, the first one, and there was absolutely no talent required, and we just used to play for the student Christmas passes.

Presenter28:45

Whether they wanted you to or not.

Dame Wendy Hall28:45

Whether they wanted you to or not. And now we have a band called Led Zeppelin, and we still do Wonderful Tonight.

Presenter28:50

Um let me ask you a little bit then about the development o of the web. What is the best case scenario? What do you think is not just the responsible way, but the exciting and illuminating way for the web to develop in order that it is a a positive thing generally for humankind?

Dame Wendy Hall29:06

The most important thing is that we get to grips with the issues of how we manage our personal data and who manages the Internet.

Dame Wendy Hall29:17

This is a really difficult question.

Dame Wendy Hall29:20

Because actually nobody does. It's very like you can lose use an analogy with what we're trying to do with tackling climate change, that you have to come to an agreement as a world on what you're going to do. And we're way off, way off being able to do that in terms of how we run this thing for the good of humanity going forward. So this is a really serious issue. And I'm just being made a member of a new Global Commission on Internet Governance, which has got a two year brief to try and come up with some sensible suggestions as to what we might try and agree to. And I think it's largely about

Dame Wendy Hall29:59

openness and transparency in terms of people knowing what happens to their data and knowing what rights we have as individuals in this world and what responsibilities our governments have.

Presenter30:11

Looking into the much more short term, in ten years' time are we going to look back and sort of wryly nod our heads at the olden days when people used to use Facebook and Twitter?

Dame Wendy Hall30:19

Well that's the sort of question I we set our students to think about because nobody knows the answer. In a hundred years' time will they still be using social networks to communicate? Well they won't call them social networks for a start and we could have chips in our brains by then. I think there is one fundamental though. We as human beings absolutely love to communicate. I remember with my school friends we found a way to do what we'd call today a teleconference. I can't remember whose phone had a fault on it, but we used to call each other up and we used to help each other our mass homework on this sort of conference call. This was in the sixties and the worst thing you can do to a human being is put them in solitary confinement. So I think the technology will change and we've got to get to grips with the ethical issues and the regulatory issues or it could go horribly wrong.

Presenter31:07

I know that your staff in your office and your husband at home lash up the computers there, but how practical would you be on an island? Could you lash up a a shelter?

Dame Wendy Hall31:14

Well yes, I think I could. I've you know, I learnt in the Brownies and Girl Guides how to light fires and do that sort of thing and I'm pretty practical, but I I might struggle a bit. Yeah, and I might be a bit scared at night. Let's have your final piece of music. Uh

Presenter31:30

Uh Yeah.

Dame Wendy Hall31:30

What is it? We started with the Beatles and we're finishing with the Beatles and this is one of those classical anthems sung again by Paul, Let It Be.

Speaker 431:39

Ready?

Speaker 431:43

Let it be, let it be.

Speaker 431:47

Yeah there will be an answer, let it be

Speaker 431:53

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.

Speaker 432:00

Whisper word of wind, let it be.

Presenter32:13

That was the Beatles and Let It Be. It's time for me to give you the books, Dame Wendy Hall. You get the Bible, as you know, and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Dame Wendy Hall32:18

On the computer.

Presenter32:20

And then another book to take along too. What would it be?

Dame Wendy Hall32:23

I'm going to ask you for Wikipedia.

Presenter32:25

That's impossible, obviously.

Dame Wendy Hall32:27

No, it's not. Can I have it on a Kindle with a solar panel and no connection to the Internet?

Presenter32:32

There will be no Kindle, it will be a paper book.

Dame Wendy Hall32:35

Well that okay that's fine

Presenter32:37

Desert Island Disc has been going for seventy two years. That's longer than the Internet.

Dame Wendy Hall32:40

Potter.

Dame Wendy Hall32:41

Well, okay, if you print it out, it's equivalent to two thousand volumes of the um encyclopedia.

Presenter32:46

You can have that, that's fine.

Presenter32:52

Can you imagine the letters we'd get if I let you take a Kindle? I'd never get into the studio for answering them. And what's your luxury going to be?

Dame Wendy Hall32:59

Okay, an infinite supply of my favourite spa products. Okay, would you like a whole spa to go with some, please? Yes, please. Yes, why not?

Presenter33:05

Uh

Presenter33:07

If I were to ask you to save just one of these discs from the waves, which one would it be? That's easy, let's.

Dame Wendy Hall33:10

That's easy, let it be.

Presenter33:11

Okay, it's yours, Dane Wendy Hall. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, Kirstie.

Dame Wendy Hall33:16

It's been such fun.

Presenter33:58

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter34:00

You'll find more information on the Radio4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.