Essential Computer History and Information Revolution Books
Top 10 Essential Computer History and Information Revolution Books
: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, I, Robot, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cryptonomicon, Accidental Empires, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, The Machine Stops, The Difference Engine, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
| Author | Douglas R. Hofstadter |
| ISBN | 0465026567 |
Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of...
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
| ISBN | 0553803700 |
The three laws of Robotics:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as...
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
| Author | Steven Levy |
| ISBN | 0141000511 |
A mere fifteen years ago, computer nerds were seen as marginal weirdos, outsiders whose world would never resonate with the mainstream. That was before one pioneering work documented the underground computer revolution that was about to change our world forever. With groundbreaking profiles of...
| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
| ISBN | 0451457994 |
On the Moon, an enigma is uncovered.
So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.
But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...
One of the greatest-selling...
| Author | Neal Stephenson |
| ISBN | 0060512806 |
Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe....
| Author | Robert X. Cringely |
| ISBN | 0887308554 |
Computer manufacturing is--after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly...
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
| Author | James Gleick |
| ISBN | 0375423729 |
James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.
The...
The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928.
After being voted one of the best novellas...
1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history - and the...
| Author | Douglas R. Hofstadter |
| ISBN | 0553345842 |
Brilliant, shattering, mind-jolting, The Mind's I is a searching, probing cosmic journey of the mind that goes deeply into the problem of self and self-consciousness as anything written in our time. From verbalizing chimpanzees to scientific speculations involving machines with souls, from the...
The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
| ISBN | 1857989325 |
Andrew was one of Earth's first house robot domestic servants—smoothly designed and functional. But when Andrew started to develop special talents which exceeded the confines of his allotted positronic pathways, he abandoned his domestic duties in favour of more intellectual pursuits. As time...
| Author | Anne McCaffrey |
| ISBN | 0345334310 |
It was Thanksgiving, I was out of town, had just gotten ready to head out for dinner when I heard that Anne McCaffrey had passed. It hit me like a punch in the gut. I couldn't quite shake it all evening. What was going on? Sure, I've read her books but she has never been on a list of favorite authors, why was I so...
| Author | Jay Williams |
| ISBN | 0070705208 |
No more homework!
Professor Bullfinch goes off to attend a scientific conference and leaves Danny in charge of his new miniature automatic computer called Minia. Danny calls it a midget giant brain and suddenly comes up with an idea. Could he program Minny to help him do his homework faster?...
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You
| Author | Eli Pariser |
| ISBN | 1594203008 |
An eye-opening account of how the hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling - and limiting - the information we consume.
In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries...
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
| ISBN | 0345331192 |
In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov first introduced Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, who would later become his favorite protagonists. The book's central crime is a murder, which takes place before the novel opens. Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador, lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost...
A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet
Abandoned.
I can appreciate that as late as 1999, RealAudio was still considered a marvel (the edition I read was from Overlook Press, Woodstock NY, 2000, p.12) and I absolutely understand the metaphor and appeal of the Bakelite radio era :: the early web.
But.
On page 50,...
Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks
| Author | Guy Claxton |
| ISBN | 0300208820 |
If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you’d better think again—or rather not “think” at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our...
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer
| Author | Ada Lovelace |
| ISBN | 0912647094 |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06bglnh
Description: In part two of this dramatization of The Letters of Ada Lovelace, Georgina Ferry reveals the nature of the relationship between the young heiress, Ada Lovelace (Sally Hawkins) and the crusty mathematician, Charles Babbage...
The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age
| Author | Robert Wachter |
| ISBN | 0071849467 |
While modern medicine produces miracles, it also delivers care that is too often unsafe, unreliable, unsatisfying, and impossibly expensive. For the past few decades, technology has been touted as the cure for all of healthcare's ills.
But medicine stubbornly resisted computerization...
