Computer History

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future. One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions...

New technologies can inspire us, but the breakneck pace of change can also frighten us. So how do Christians walk by faith through the innovations of Silicon Valley? To build a biblical theology of technology, journalist and tech optimist Tony Reinke examines nine key texts from Scripture to show how the world’s discoveries are divinely orchestrated. With the help of several theologians and inventors throughout history, Reinke dispels 12 common myths in the church and offers 14 ethical convictions to help Christians live by faith in the age of big tech.

The world has never been so unstable. Now, more than ever, we need to understand our history, learn from our mistakes, and embrace science and technology as we push into the future. In his debut book, New Thinking: The Technology and Science That Transformed Our World, Dagogo Altraide of YouTube's ColdFusion breaks down the history of gamechanger breakthroughs in the world of science and technology that have shaped our modern world and will impact the future.

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.

When Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. In vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community.

Though created by humans, our technologies, markets, and institutions often contain an antihuman agenda. Douglas Rushkoff, digital theorist and host of the NPR-One podcast Team Human, reveals the dynamics of this antihuman machinery and invites us to remake these aspects of society in ways that foster our humanity. In 100 aphoristic statements, his manifesto exposes how forces for human connection have turned into ones of isolation and repression.

If you've ever made a secure purchase with your credit card over the internet, then you have seen cryptography, or "crypto", in action. From Stephen Levy - the author who made "hackers" a household word - comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the 21st century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels" - nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters - teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the internet.

Are you concerned about how artificial intelligence is reshaping our world? Worried about protecting yourself and your family in an increasingly AI-driven society? Looking to understand the real implications of AI beyond the Hollywood hype? In this groundbreaking book, cybersecurity expert and PhD researcher John Bambenek reveals the subtle yet profound ways AI is transforming our lives—from job applications and creative expression to privacy and personal security.

The world of computers is growing at an unrecordable rate every day. Computers are the most influential tools in our lives. They are our present and future. Most users see a computer at the front and use the graphical user interfaces. The first time I used a computer, it intrigued me to know how these interfaces work. In this book, you will learn the same way I did.

AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.

Il tema dell'intelligenza artificiale sta dominando ormai da alcuni anni il dibattito pubblico. Questo perché, anche se abbiamo appena iniziato ad avvertire l'impatto che l'IA avrà sulle nostre vite, stiamo diventando sempre più consapevoli che i suoi effetti saranno profondi, così come sarà profondo il modo in cui essa trasformerà il nostro rapporto con la realtà, la conoscenza e la verità. Le sue potenzialità aumentano a un ritmo vertiginoso, e i progressi, come i benefici che sapremo trarne, appaiono straordinari. Tuttavia, non mancano i segnali d'allarme.

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms.

In The Trail of Gold and Silver, historian Duane A. Smith details Colorado's mining saga - a story that stretches from the beginning of the gold and silver mining rush in the mid-19th century into the 21st century. Gold and silver mining laid the foundation for Colorado's economy, and 1859 marked the beginning of a fever for these precious metals.

Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and...

Award-winning author William Rosen tells the story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the machine that drove it: the steam engine.

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this "attention economy", we need to recognize the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control.

In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists.

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.

One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the...