Computer History

Microsoft commands the high ground of the information superhighway by owning the operating systems and basic applications programs that run on hundreds of millions of computers around the world. Beyond the unquestioned genius and vision of Bill Gates, what accounts for Microsoft's astounding success? Drawing on almost two years of on-site observation at Microsoft headquarters, eminent scientists Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby reveal many of Microsoft's innermost secrets.

The window for wealth is wide open in the cutting edge world of artificial intelligence. The AI market is already valued at nearly $100 billion, and by 2030, it could add $15.7 trillion to the world economy. Safe to say there’s plenty of profit to go around.

Think creatively like a human. Analyze and solve problems efficiently like a computer. Our everyday lives are filled with inefficient and ineffective decisions and solutions. Being overwhelmed by the magnitude of our problems makes it hard to think clearly. We procrastinate and overthink. Our thoughts are tainted with biases. If only there was a way to simplify our decision-making and problem-solving process and get satisfying, consistent results! The good news is, there is! Apply computer algorithms to your everyday problems.

From facial recognition—capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.

Empire of the Air tells the story of three American visionaries - Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff - whose imagination and dreams turned a hobbyist's toy into radio, launching the modern communications age. Tom Lewis weaves the story of these men and their achievements into a richly detailed and moving narrative that spans the first half of the 20th century, a time when the American romance with science and technology was at its peak.

In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure.

Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice. But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic.

In 2015 Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's popular podcast and radio show Note to Self, led tens of thousands of listeners through an experiment to help them unplug from their devices, get bored, jump-start their creativity, and change their lives. Bored and Brilliant builds on that experiment to show us how to rethink our gadget use to live better and smarter in this new digital ecosystem. In this fascinating new audiobook, Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking.

The world of golf is at a crossroads. As technological innovations displace traditional philosophies, the golfing community has splintered into two deeply combative factions: the old-school teachers and players who believe in feel, artistry, and imagination, and the technical-minded who want to remake the game around data. In Golf’s Holy War, “an obvious hole-in-one for golfers and their coaches” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Brett Cyrgalis takes us inside the heated battle playing out from weekend hackers to PGA Tour pros.

La digitalización avanza inexorablemente. Aturdidos por el frenesí de la comunicación y la información, nos sentimos impotentes ante el tsunami de datos que despliega fuerzas destructivas y deformantes.

Digital Apollo examines the design and execution of each of the six Apollo moon landings, drawing on transcripts and data telemetry from the flights, astronaut interviews, and NASA's extensive archives. Mindell's exploration of how human pilots and automated systems worked together to achieve the ultimate in flight - a lunar landing - traces and reframes the debate over the future of humans and automation in space.

Digital transformation of the business landscape is well underway, and businesses are being reshaped faster than ever before. Agility and adaptability are now critical components of these businesses' survival. But building these traits requires a holistic approach with an unrelenting focus on automation. How does one go about developing that focus? Vijay Tella, Scott Brinker, and Massimo Pezzini deliver a guide to implementing automation in the real world, avoiding jargon and vague bromides in favor of concrete examples.

Many people today are so dazzled by the long-term potential for artificial intelligence that they overlook the much clearer and more immediate potential for a new form of "collective intelligence": the intelligence of groups of people and computers working together. In Superminds, Thomas Malone explains what we need to do to take advantage of this potential. Groundbreaking and utterly fascinating, Superminds will change the way you work - both with others and with computers - for the better.

In the early 1990s, Motorola, the legendary American technology company, developed a revolutionary satellite system called Iridium that promised to be its crowning achievement. Light-years ahead of anything previously put into space, and built on technology developed for Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars", Iridium's constellation of 66 satellites in polar orbit meant that no matter where you were on Earth, at least one satellite was always overhead, and you could call Tibet from Fiji without a delay and without your call ever touching a wire.

The digital age is in the business of commodifying our attention. The technologies of our day are determined to keep us scrolling and swiping at all costs, plugged into a feedback loop of impatience, comparison, outrage, and contempt. Blind to the dangers, we enjoy its temporary pleasures, unaware of the damage to our souls. Jay Kim's Analog Church explored the ways the digital age and its values affect the life of the church. In Analog Christian, he asks the same question of Christian discipleship.

An innovation expert illuminates why your power to make a difference is no longer bound by your status. In The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant, one of the world's top-ranked business thinkers, reveals that we have now reached an unprecedented moment of opportunity for your ideas to "make a dent" on the world.

Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1859, Mackay abandoned his claim and walked a hundred miles to the Comstock Lode in Nevada. Over the course of the next dozen years, Mackay worked his way up from nothing, thwarting the pernicious “Bank Ring” monopoly to seize control of the most concentrated cache of precious metals ever found on earth, the legendary “Big Bonanza”.

An entertaining, scientifically rigorous exploration of the social and biological effects of our wireless world. The way we use technology is affecting our health and happiness. Engaging and entertaining yet scientifically rigorous, this fully revised and updated second edition of i-Minds comprehensively explores an era of screen-based technology's assimilation into our lives, pondering it as both godsend and plague. i-Minds is for anyone interested in fostering health and happiness or who is struggling with the role of screened technology in our lives.

Futurists insist that AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted human mind. What hope do we have against superintelligent machines? But we aren't really on the path to developing intelligent machines. In fact, we don't even know where that path might be. Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence and what it would take to get there.

In this timely, entertaining, and inspiring audiobook, Jedediah Bila chronicles her chaotic, confusing, and all-consuming love-hate relationship with - her cell phone. Stepping back from the whirlwind of texting, social media, and an endless sea of apps, Bila questions how our relationships, character, and sanity have suffered from our deep dive into the digital abyss. Exploring the toll that tech addiction took on her life, Bila reveals her missteps and mistakes, including several upending, life-altering months swirling in an ex-boyfriend’s cell-phone-enabled double life.