Computer History

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 Programmed Inequality, Marie Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, labor problems grew into structural ones, and gender discrimination caused the nation's largest computer user to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole.

Humanismo digital es un texto positivo y retador que, lejos de mensajes apocalípticos y confusos sobre la inteligencia artificial, da esperanza. En este contexto, es crucial visualizar las oportunidades. Joan Clotet aspira a aumentar la conciencia del mayor número de personas y ayuda a evolucionar a todas aquellas que están dispuestas a seguir aportando valor en un mundo laboral en transición. Sin lugar a dudas, Humanismo digital aporta una mirada aterrizada e inspiradora que amplía la visión sobre el impacto de la IA en las personas. Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years: the rise of personalization.

The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the Internet in numerous ways.

At Amazon, "Day One" is code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy. Day Two is, in Jeff Bezos' own words, "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death." Most companies today are set up for Day Two. They build advantages and defend them fiercely, rather than invent the future. But Amazon and fellow tech titans Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are operating in Day One: They prioritize reinvention over tradition and collaboration over ownership.

Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution is the essential book for anyone looking to understand the next era of the internet and start building. Beyond the sensational hype and headlines around crypto and NFTs, a real revolution is taking place: new technologies for owning, moving, and organizing value spell the overdue end of an internet where a few huge companies hoard data and power, and open a new frontier for products, services, and applications in which ownership and control belongs to creators, builders, and users.

It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills - and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These "bots" started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected.

Hidden beneath the surface of the internet, a new, stark reality is looming - one that cuts to the very heart of our endless debates about the impact of AI. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this "ghost economy".

In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally - hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners - that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology.

The audiobook, How to Build a Computer (For Beginners), outlines step-by-step instructions on how to build a computer from the bare bones to the finished product. The book includes a list of choices for tools and supplies necessary to successfully build a computer on your own; using the author's educated knowledge and background on computer software and hardware.

This book traces the Internet's development from its theoretical foundations in the 1950s through its maturation as a global network by 2025. It explores not only the technical milestones and breakthrough innovations but also the social, economic, and political forces that shaped its growth. The story of the Internet is simultaneously a tale of brilliant individual inventors, collaborative scientific communities, corporate competition, government policy, and grassroots adoption.

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.

In this eagerly awaited new book from the author of the best-selling Nostalgia Nerd's Retro Tech, Peter Leigh takes a fun, informative and irreverent romp through the history of more than 40 pieces of personal tech, charting the successes, failures and oddities from over five decades of our obsession with gadgetry.

"Obéissance et irresponsabilité, voilà les deux Mots Magiques qui ouvriront demain le Paradis de la Civilisation des Machines. La civilisation française, héritière de la civilisation hellénique, a travaillé pendant des siècles pour former des hommes libres, c'est-à-dire pleinement responsables de leurs actes : la France refuse d'entrer dans le Paradis des Robots."

"Smart Ecosystems: Integrating Nature and Technology in Future Cities", the latest installment in the acclaimed Building Digital Twin Metaverse Cities series, delivers a visionary blueprint for urban environments of the future—where cutting-edge technology harmonizes with the beauty of nature. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Samuel Li explores how cities can transition from resource-intensive hubs to regenerative spaces that nurture biodiversity, promote sustainability, and enhance human well-being.

Many theories that form the bedrock of good parenting were created decades before devices even existed - they don't consider the significant impact on a child's psychological and physical development. The landscape of the early years has changed so quickly, yet parents and caregivers do not have access to the evidence-based, practical advice they need to manage this invasion of screens. They can see their children become addicted to devices, but don't know what to do. Generation Zombie will fill this knowledge gap.

In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively or cultivate meaningful relationships.

Worm: The First Digital World War tells the story of the Conficker worm, a potentially devastating piece of malware that has baffled experts and infected more than twelve million computers worldwide. When Conficker was unleashed in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, it grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks.

Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped—and have been shaped by—the cultures in which they arose. In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. A masterful analysis of technology and culture, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects of a technology-dependent world.