Reviews (8)

Erroneous Information re John E. Holt
Statement that John E. Holt, an official of the General Services Administration proposed connecting all the goverments computers together in a Network called FEDNET is false. Statement that Vice President Gerald Ford had Holt demoted is also false.
Privacy education even at the gym!
I take your Ben Franklin privacy book to the gym...I can't tell you how many people are intrigued by the title. You can open to any chapter, and still be educated. I love it.
Broad and accurate - a wonderful book
Ben Franklin's Web Site is a wonderful book - clear, detailed, engaging, hype-free. Read more

Subjects:  1. Constitutional    2. History    3. History / United States / General    4. Legal Reference / Law Profession    5. Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights    6. Political Science    7. Politics/International Relations    8. Practical Guides    9. Privacy, Right of    10. United States    11. Computers    12. Social aspects    13. United States - General   

Editorial Review

Back in the early 1980s, word spread about an inviting little personal computer that used something called a mouse and smiled at you when you turned it on. Steven Levy relates his first encounter with the pre-released Mac and goes on to chronicle the machine that Apple developers hoped would "make a dent in the universe." A wonderful story told by a terrific writer (Levy was the longtime writer of the popular "Iconoclast" column in Read more

Reviews (38)

Insanely Great or just Half-Hearted?
Let me preface this review with the fact that I love Steven Levy.Well, his books anyhow.That said, this review is necessarily tainted by my experience with some of his other work.The curse of the author who pens a masterpiece (i.e. "Hackers" by Levy) is that everything that came before, and after, will be compared against said masterpiece.The case of "Insanely Great" is no different.
Great view into the development of the Mac
This book shines for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how the Macintosh came to be. Everyone knows the basic story of how Apple based the Mac on the innovations of Xerox, but the real story is much deeper than that. Xerox PARC provided the innovation and spark, but there was a lot more blood and guts work that followed, especially considering the state of computer technology at the time. While there is of course a lot about Steve Jobs, equal attention is given to the various engineers who did nuts and bolts software and hardware development. Those looking for corporate intrigue and board room warfare could probably find better accounts elsewhere, although these are also covered here (as they inevitably had an effect on the Mac's development over the years.)
I for "Internet"
Once upon a time, a guy named Steve had a vision: to take IBM's place in the computer industry. Not by copying IBM's ideas as Michael Dell did. No. By innovating...Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer - Apple/Macintosh    2. Computer Industry    3. History    4. Infrastructure    5. Macintosh (Computer)    6. Science    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Computers / History   

Reviews (1)

Excellent Ground Breaking Book
The story of the Bletchley Park code breaking efforts towards the German Enigma machine are well known. (If you are not familar the best book on the Enigma is:The German Enigma Cipher Machine: Beginnings, Success, and Ultimate Failure - ISBN 1-58053-996-3) Down through the years there have been only casual references to the Colossus machine that was used on the more sophisticated German coding machines.
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Subjects:  1. Computers - General Information    2. Cryptography    3. Electronic intelligence    4. General    5. Great Britain    6. History    7. History - Military / War    8. History: American    9. Lorenz cipher system    10. Military    11. Military - Intelligence/Espionage    12. Military - World War II    13. World War, 1939-1945    14. British & Irish history: Second World War    15. British Isles    16. Coding theory & cryptology    17. Computer Science | History    18. Computers / History    19. History of science    20. Social & Legal Aspects of Computing   

Editorial Review

Considering that the history of the Internet is perhaps better documented internally than any other technological construct, it is remarkable how shadowy its origins have been to most people, including die-hard Net-denizens! Read more

Reviews (47)

Good book for those only mildly techy
Great history without being so technical that it gets dry.Recommend for anyone that has an interest in how we got to this point in the revolution of the internet but isnt so techy that you know how to code html by hand!

Great book on the history of the internet
This was an excellent account of how the internet was created and how both ARPA and distributed networking has shaped what we use now everyday.. This book provided an excellent account of what the founders of the internet had to deal with in order to design what we have today.. A good book about the history of the net
This book tells about how the Internet as we know it today has come into existence.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer - Internet    2. Computers    3. Internet    4. Internet (Computer network)    5. Internet - General    6. Networking - General    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Computers / General    9. History of engineering & technology    10. COMPUTERS-COMMUNICATIONS/NETWORKING    11. Computer networks    12. History    13. Technology And Social Change    14. Computer Industry    15. COMPUTERS-GENERAL INFORMATION    16. Computers And Society    17. Social aspects   

Reviews (10)

Very interesting, provocative, little book
Dreyfus is a Heidegger scholar who is also known for his books explaining "why computers can't think."This short (it can be read in an evening), provocative book discusses some of the problems of reliance on the Internet as a source of information and an educational forum, in a way that is interestingly informed by Dreyfus's study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.I highly recommend this book both to students of Continental philosophy (the author's use of Kierkegaard to argue against Habermas's notion of the "public sphere" as the locus of a meaningfully participatory democracy is especially provocative) and to anyone who has ever wondered whether the Internet really is making our lives better.Dreyfus explains why and how it may not be.

Kierkegaard surfs prodigiously...
This is a very little book dealing with a very big subject: does the internet add or detract from meaning in our lives? Such a topic can be covered only in a cursory way within 107 pages, but the major issues are represented in this book, and provide valuable food for thought. From Plato to the net..The early fears.
"On the internet",written by H.L Dreyfus a professor at Berkley is one of the very few books on the market approaching the "net" from a philosophical point of view rather than a technical one.Read more

Subjects:  1. Free Will & Determinism    2. History & Surveys - Modern    3. Information technology    4. Internet    5. Internet - General    6. Philosophy    7. Social Aspects - General    8. Social aspects    9. Social isolation    10. Impact of computing & IT on society    11. Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects    12. Topics in philosophy    13. Western philosophy, from c 1900 -   

Editorial Review

The Helms have put together an excellent introductory guide to doing genealogical research online. They've avoided the usual trap of organizing their book by resources, which may be easy for the author but makes it harder on the user. So instead of devoting this chapter to useful Web sites, that chapter to valuable newsgroups, and so forth, they've organized the book in a way closer to the way you'd organize good family research. Read more

Reviews (10)

very basic
This book is for the beginner genealogist. It tells you how to plan your research and what kind of computer equipment to have. It takes you step by step in certain websites. It is extremely boring, even for a genealogy book. I was hoping for more info on what is contained in individual websites, where to find certain types of documents and explantions of software available to the genealogist. It is great if you don't have a clue but if you can navigate the internet on your own, you don't need this book. I will use it occasionally but The Genealogy Sourcebook and The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy are much more in depth.

Genealogy Online for Dummies, 4th edition,
Genealogy Online for Dummies is a handy how-to, where-to, what-to, who-to, and why-to book.Matthew L. Helm, one of the authors, is executive vice president and chief technology officer of FamilyToolbox.net, Inc.With a bachelor's degree in history and a master's in library and information science, he created and he maintains the Helm's various genealogy websites.April Leigh Helm, the other author, is the company president.She has degrees in journalism and higher education administration.They are no dummies, and anyone who reads this book will be no dummy about genealogy online. review of Genealogy Online for Dummies
Pros: Covers lots of topics and is a very valuable source for beginners with great, well written, summaries of many skills and sources needed for doing family historyRead more

Subjects:  1. Computer network resources    2. Computers - Other Applications    3. Databases    4. Directories    5. Genealogy    6. Handbooks, manuals, etc    7. Hobbies/Crafts    8. Internet - General    9. Reference    10. Family history    11. Reference / Genealogy   

Editorial Review

The story of supercomputing is only partially about technology. More than anything, it's about the gifted, brilliant, and often eccentric individuals who knew how to use that technology in new ways to do amazing things. Perhaps the most amazing of the bunch was Seymour Cray, the bureaucracy-intolerant genius with the barnstorming mind whose name has become synonymous with supercomputers. Charles Murray gives us an insightful and often thrilling and sometimes amusing look into how Cray and his genius companions took computers to new heights and humbled companies like Control Data and IBM. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

machines for an irrelevant niche
You can of course read this book as a biography of Seymour Cray. But while it describes his genius, it also shows the severely constricted niche in which his company operated. The sheer cost of each supercomputer meant that the client base was restricted to the largest companies and governments. A large part of that cost was due to the custom chips and systems of chips. There never was an economy of scale with Cray's machines.
The Supermen -- details make this book
This was an excellent bnook for any one interested in the evolution of super computers.Perhaps even for those with no background in the industry.This is not only a story of techological change, but of a maverick as well.Small versus conglomerate.From the beginning, one reads how a small group of engineers can make somethjing extraoridinary.The book does not diminish the importance of money in the ultimate outcome.
just wonderful!
This is just one of the best books I have ever read! The historic point of view is awesome!Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography/Autobiography    3. Computer Architecture - General    4. Computer Engineering    5. Computer Industry    6. Computer engineers    7. Computers    8. Computers - General Information    9. Cray computers    10. Cray, Seymour    11. Design and construction    12. History    13. Supercomputers    14. United States    15. Biography: general    16. Computers / General    17. History of engineering & technology   

Reviews (8)

hopelessly out of date.
This is a good book. The problem is it is WAY out of date, so out of date that he describes Pidgin ALGOL as a high level computer language.Higher then assembly sure, but give me a break.What I do like about this book is it is not wordy, it explains the topics quickly without over complicating them. If your looking for a more mordern approch look else where.

Not optional
When I was in grad school starting a course in the Analysis of Algorithms, our professor told us there were only two reasonable choices of text for the course.We could use Knuth TAOCP or AHU.Since we were all students, probably starving, we would use AHU.

The very classic
Excluding Knuth's opera (another dimension), this (AHU) is about the other and only renowned classic algorithms book, deseverdly I'd say, together with Cormen-Leiserson-Rivest's (CLR) "Introduction to Algorithms". With the difference that the first and only edition of AHU has been written 16 years before the first (of the two) editions of CLR.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computer Science    3. Computer algorithms    4. Computer programming    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Programming - Algorithms    8. Programming - General    9. Questions & Answers    10. Computers / Programming / Algorithms    11. History of ideas, intellectual history   

Reviews (2)

Digitize this!
This is a book for dummies!It assumes you know nothing about scanners, cameras or the digital world. If that's the case, then this is the book for you. However, I found it difficult to read as the author does not get to the point. Too much time is spent on the simplest things while ignoring the point of the text. It would have been nice to pick up a book like this and get to the point of 'how to' without having to jump hoops through the history of things. That was not the point of the purchase of such a book nor the representation of the cover. There was no point reading the entire text as I quickly realized that much of it was "filler" text and I could skip to the parts I thought were interesting. My recommendation would be to look for other title options before this one.

Excellent guide to a relatively newsubject
When my father died a few years ago, my mother began systematically sorting through eight decades of accumulated stuff and giving the next generation "first dibs" on anything they wanted before the remainder was discarded. Of course, I took anything relating to the family's history, including old correspondence, military and employment files, and about forty pounds of old photo albums and several shoeboxes of loose snapshots. I'm slowly, steadily working my way through them, scanning not only photographs but also documents and old letters into a digitized format, cleaning up some of the older items with Photoshop, writing up brief text files (to be attached to the image files) explaining those people, places, and circumstances I could identify (and also transcribing my mother's penciled notes from the backs of many of the photos), and collecting everything in some sort of order on CDs for later distribution to the rest of the family. (Christmas is always coming.) Now, I'm reasonably computer-savvy and I have professional training in archival conservation, so all this seemed pretty obvious to me, but that probably would not be the case for many non-techies.
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Subjects:  1. Computer network resources    2. Digital preservation    3. Genealogy    4. Reference    5. Family history   

Reviews (1)

Gorgeous and important, but points off for theoryspeak
What I really appreciate about Rahim's volume is the nuts-and-bolts (or NURBS-and-splines) seriousness with which it approaches the real-world challenges of digital architecture. This means that it gives as much attention to the optimal design of some frankly squamous-lookin' load-bearing and stress-distributing structures as it does to the (largely post-Deleuzian) theory underlying this work.Read more

Subjects:  1. 20th Century Architecture    2. 20th century    3. Architectural Design    4. Architecture    5. Design & Drafting    6. General    7. History    8. History - General    9. Architecture / General    10. Computer modelling & simulation   

Editorial Review

This book delivers exactly what its title promises: a straightforward and comprehensive account of the electronic digital computer's first five decades. Starting with the historic ENIAC of 1945, Ceruzzi moves nimbly through one epochal generation of computing technology after another: the gargantuan, vacuum-tube-filled mainframes of the early '50s; the sleeker, transistorized minicomputers of the '60s; the personal computers conjured up by hobbyists in the '70s; and the computer networks that have come to span offices and the globe in the last 10 years.Read more

Reviews (11)

no mention of Shockley?!
Ceruzzi defines the modern computing era as post World War 2. His narrative shows a twist perhaps unappreciated by current readers. Nowadays, all computers use semiconductor chips. Mostly made of silicon. But the use of such chips did not become widespread till the 1960s. For the first 20 years, computers used tubes. (Yuk.)
useless for software
I looked up the people I knew and knew of. None of them were in. Gradually, I realized this is a hardware history, and a US-based one at that. Hardware is important, but software is more important.

4 STARS for Ceruzzi
Very informative and exciting. Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Science    2. Computer Science (General)    3. Computers    4. Computers - General Information    5. Electronic data processing    6. History    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Social Aspects    9. Computing and Information Technology    10. History of specific subjects    11. Technology / Social Aspects   

Editorial Review

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Reviews (9)

Once Upon a Timeline
I read The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention by David F. Noble for a college course called Philosophy of Technology.I read this book in the context of the required reading of other philosophers such as: Bill Joy, Raymond Kurzweil, Douglas Kellner, Don Ihde, Jacques Ellul, Hans Jonas, Martin Heideggar, Albert Borgmann, and Arnold Pacey.
Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Amazing how I could use the title "Religion of Technology" and counter Noble's thesis.Key to understanding this book is to grasp the milieu in which Noble writes:he wishes to utilize historical critical methods in deconstructing the evolution of technology.Fascinating idea, and his ideas are intriguing; but he is misguided.The key problem lies in the Cartesian dichotomy of spirit vs. body. People are giving this book less credit than it deserves....
This is a good book and a bit of a fun read though in its nature-- in what it tries to be-- it alienates itself from whatever group is intended to be its core audience. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile and well-written; though I gather than some, from its reviews, have had some problems with its difficulty and subject matter.Read more

Subjects:  1. Christianity    2. General    3. History    4. History - General History    5. History Of Technology    6. History: American    7. Presence of God    8. Reference    9. Religion    10. Religion And Science    11. Religious aspects    12. Technology    13. World - General    14. History / General    15. Impact of computing & IT on society   

Editorial Review

Francis Sullivan of the Institute for Defense Analysis said "Great algorithms are the poetry of computation"; David Berlinski calls the algorithm "the idea that rules the world." Read more

Reviews (43)

More like Gödel's Proof, Context and Aftermath -- a different tack (than Nagel's "Gödel's Proof"), than much about algorithms
Other reviewers have said many useful things.The main point you must know is that this book is a rather flowery text that goes in many different directions, but parts -- large parts! -- are very informative and make clear to you some very important ideas.Let me quote the best, on-target, portions of other reviewers:
Does Mathematics Support Darwin or Intelligent Design?
Mathematician David Berlinski explains how the "algorithm" is sure to play a major role in the future of mathematics.An algorithm, Berlinski explains, is essentially a logical, mathematical procedure by which a goal can be accomplished in a finite number of steps.
Beware Uninitiated Reader, Better used as a firestarter.
Upon reading the Preface and Introduction I can't believe my eyes.I have seen english comp 101 papers with more clarity than Berlinski.
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Subjects:  1. Algebra    2. Algorithms    3. History    4. History & Philosophy    5. Logic    6. Mathematical And Symbolic Logic    7. Mathematics    8. Philosophy Of Mathematics    9. Programming - Algorithms    10. Reference    11. Science    12. Science/Mathematics    13. Computers / Programming / General   

Reviews (4)

Interesting perspective on society and war
I picked up Halter's book almost by accident.Although I'm a military historian and wargamer I've never been interested in the video game genre. I was just about to put the book back on the shelf when I realized the book isn't really about video games per se but about how computer wargames have been shaped by war and how computer wargames fit into our culture.
Great Book about a subject that had to be written about
As a professional in the Modeling and Simulation field I see this book as a great analysis of the mistaken belief that because you can play video games you can fight a war and take on complex social problems.Video games are made for entertainment to satisfy the need for humans to play.If you put the psychology of real human beings into video games, you will not have fun game. Mr. Halter's book give great insight into the problems that have to be overcome to create a "realistic" environment for the training of future soldiers, and what we have so far are not even close.The day we can have a kid walk from the video arcade to a M1 Abrams tank and fight effectively we will have reached our goal. . .but, is that where we want to be?

An eye-opening history
This is a clear-headed and fascinating account of the many complex links between war and video games, some of which I knew something about (America's Army for example) and others I'd never heard about (like the Institute for Creative Technology at the USC, where the Army develops videogames for training). Halter approaches the subject matter with a wry but even-handed manner, and he makes clear that he's an avid game player himself, unlike many political journalists who have taken on similar subjects. He begins in ancient civilizations, runs us through the ways games were used in Victorian times for strategy, and reveals how military needs funded the early hacker culture where video games were invented. About half the book is about the post-9/11 era, however, and the part I knew least about is his final chapter dealing with games about war made by activists and artists. All in all it is a thoroughly entertaining read, and a sharp analysis of the way in which the experience of real war and conflict have seeped into our popular culture for reasons that aren't always obvious. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Games    2. General    3. History    4. History - Military / War    5. Military    6. Military - General    7. Popular Culture    8. Video & Electronic - General    9. History / Military / General