Authors: Andrew Hodges.
Paperback, 608 pages
Publisher: Walker & Company
Publication Date: 2000-03-01


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    Alan Turing died in 1954, but the themes of his life epitomize the turn of the millennium. A pure mathematician from a tradition that prided itself on its impracticality, Turing laid the foundations for modern computer science, writes Andrew Hodges:

Alan had proved that there was no "miraculous machine" that could solve all mathematical problems, but in the process he had discovered something almost equally miraculous, the idea of a universal machine that could take over the work of any machine.

During World War II, Turing was the intellectual star of Bletchley Park, the secret British cryptography unit. His work cracking the German's Enigma machine code was, in many ways, the first triumph of computer science. And Turing died because his identity as a homosexual was incompatible with cold-war ideas of security, implemented with machines and remorseless logic: "It was his own invention, and it killed the goose that laid the golden eggs."

Andrew Hodges's remarkable insight weaves Turing's mathematical and computer work with his personal life to produce one of the best biographies of our time, and the basis of the Derek Jacobi movie Breaking the Code. Hodges has the mathematical knowledge to explain the intellectual significance of Turing's work, while never losing sight of the human and social picture:

In this sense his life belied his work, for it could not be contained by the discrete state machine. At every stage his life raised questions about the connection (or lack of it) between the mind and the body, thought and action, intelligence and operations, science and society, the individual and history.

And Hodges admits what all biographers know, but few admit, about their subjects: "his inner code remains unbroken." Alan Turing is still an enigma. --Mary Ellen Curtin...

Authors: Marthe Arends. Prima.
Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Publication Date: 2000-09-21
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Family Tree Maker is a program that allows users to input their family information and produce a variety of charts, reports, and customizable family history books. Create Your Family History Book with Family Tree Maker 8: The Official Guide takes you through the steps necessary to create your personal family history book. Once it is completed, you can take your book to a local printer or a publishing house and have a bound copy made, transfer it to a CD to create a multimedia scrapbook, or post it on your Web page. With the help of this book, you can share your heritage with your entire family!...

Authors: Martin Campbell-kelly. William Aspray.
Paperback, 360 pages
Publisher: Westview Press
Publication Date: 2004-08-12
Edition: 2

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    This history of the computer explores the roots of the industry's phenomenal development, tracing not only the development of the machine itself--beginning with Charles Babbage's well-known 1883 mechanical prototype--but also chronicling the effects of manufacturing and sales innovations by such companies as Remington and National Cash Register that made the boom possible. The authors recount the transition from slow mechanical computers to the vacuum-tubed electronic computers, ENIAC and EDVAC, pioneered by a team led by mathematician John von Neumann during World War II. Later innovations made the computer a mass-market item, and now, the authors suggest, freedom of access to the technology is constrained only by the imperative of computer companies to make money....

Authors: Lars Spuybroek.
Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Publication Date: 2004-12-30


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    Rotterdam-based NOX, run by Lars Spuybroek, is the most important digital architecture studio in Europe. This major publication serves as a manifesto of the next techniques in digital design; a manual of instruction, showing how complex spaces can actually be built; and a monograph of NOX's complete output. An introduction by Spuybroek explains the background to his thinking and his general approach to architecture. The book is divided into three essential elements: documentation of NOX's oeuvre, including built and unbuilt work, some twenty-three projects in total; essays by leading lights in design and cultural criticism who are carrying out research in the area of architecture and the computer - Manuel Delanda, Brian Massumi, Detlef Mertins, Andrew Benjamin and Arjen Mulder; and explanatory texts by Spuybroek that link the projects together and give clear, step-by-step descriptions of his design methodologies. Many of the illustrations in the book have been specially created, making accessible for the first time the complex strategies and techniques employed by Spuybroek. This in turn will make the publication an invaluable resource for students and practising designers looking...

Authors: Harold D. Lasswell.
Paperback, 268 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1971-04-15


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    This classic book on propaganda technique focuses on American, British, French, and German experience in World War I. The book sets forth a simple classification of various psychological materials used to produce certain specific results and proposes a general theory of strategy and tactics for the manipulation of these materials.

In an introduction (coauthored by Jackson A. Giddens) written for this edition, Harold Lasswell notes that this study was partially an exercise in the discovery of appropriate theory. It raised the crucial questions of how to classify the content of propaganda—for instance, a distinction is made between "value demands" (war aims, war guilt, and casting the enemy as evil personified) and "expectations" (the illusion of victory)—and how to summarize the procedures employed in organizing and carrying out propaganda operations.

Propaganda Technique in World War I deals primarily with problems of internal administration and lateral coordination rather than with the relationship between policymakers and propagandists. However, Jackson Giddens enumerates procedures in the book that illustrate an underlying assumption that decision makers were deeply involved in propaganda and influenced by considerations of public opinion. He takes the study of propaganda further by elaborating on the nature and meaning of the category of "war aims" and its relation to the propagandist, for this, more than any other category of content, "is the catalyst of transnational political action." Giddens's exploration of the development of a comprehensive theory of propaganda adds another dimension to Lasswell's study while confirming its value as outstanding groundwork for continuing research....

Authors: Rodney A. Brooks.
Paperback, 213 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1999-07-16
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Until the mid-1980s, AI researchers assumed that an intelligent system doing high-level reasoning was necessary for the coupling of perception and action. In this traditional model, cognition mediates between perception and plans of action. Realizing that this core AI, as it was known, was illusory, Rodney A. Brooks turned the field of AI on its head by introducing the behavior-based approach to robotics. The cornerstone of behavior-based robotics is the realization that the coupling of perception and action gives rise to all the power of intelligence and that cognition is only in the eye of an observer. Behavior-based robotics has been the basis of successful applications in entertainment, service industries, agriculture, mining, and the home. It has given rise to both autonomous mobile robots and more recent humanoid robots such as Brooks' Cog.

This book represents Brooks' initial formulation of and contributions to the development of the behavior-based approach to robotics. It presents all of the key philosophical and technical ideas that put this "bottom-up" approach at the forefront of current research in not only AI but all of cognitive science....

    Will we build intelligent robots from the brain down, or from the legs up? Rodney A. Brooks, the controversial director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is betting on the latter--and the smart money's following him. Cambrian Intelligence, composed of eight papers written between 1985 and 1991, explores the technical and philosophical aspects of behavior-based robotics, offering much for the interested mind to ponder. Does cognition mediate between perception and action, or is this an illusion? Can a robot be called "intelligent" if it lacks anything we would call a brain? Brooks, simply by asking these questions, launched a new movement in artificial intelligence, and these brash, bold papers show how he laid the work for his eventual conquest of Mars with tiny autonomous robots.

Whether you're new to Brooks, know him from his work, or saw him in the documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, you'll find a lot to love in Cambrian Intelligence. The four technical papers do inspire moments of anxiety in nontechnical readers, but the four philosophical papers are splendidly thought-provoking and even a bit confrontational. (Reviewers have called his work "inflammatory," but Brooks earns this privilege because he's right.) While the work reported here is several years old, it still feels fresh and new to those of us who grew up reading about top-down artificial intelligence as if it were the only and obvious design choice. The next generation of intelligent robots are growing from the bottom up, and you can get in on the ground floor with Cambrian Intelligence. --Rob Lightner...

Authors: James F. Broderick. Darren W. Miller.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: CyberAge Books
Publication Date: 2008-05-28


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    From 9/11 to Roswell, from Princess Di to the Grassy Knoll and beyond, journalists James F. Broderick and Darren W. Miller (Consider the Source) explore more than 20 of the world s most intriguing conspiracy theories. They examine the facts surrounding each theory, present prevailing and lesser-known arguments, and point to must-see Web sites that advocate, speculate, and debunk. Web of Conspiracy is the ultimate guide for Internet-connected conspiracy theorists, buffs, and researchers and an eye-opening book for anyone who think he s heard it all....

Authors: David Weinberger.
Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication Date: 2003-05


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    David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined does not merely celebrate the World Wide Web; it attempts to make a case that the institution has completely remodeled many of the world's self-perceptions. The book does so entertainingly, if not convincingly, and is a lively collection of epigrammatic phrases (the Web is "'place-ial' but not spatial"; "on the Web everyone will be famous to 15 people"), as well as illustrations of these changes. There are intriguing assertions: that the Web is "broken on purpose" and that its many pockets of erroneous information and its available forums for disputing, say, manufacturers' hyperbole, let people feel more comfortable with their own inherent imperfections. At other times the book seems stale: it declares that the Web has disrupted long-held axioms about time, space, and knowledge retrieval and that it has dramatically rearranged notions of community and individuality. Weinberger's analysis, though occasionally facile and too relentlessly optimistic and overstated, is surely destined to be the subject of furious debate in chat rooms the cyber-world over. --H. O'Billovich ...

Authors: Christof Teuscher.
Hardcover, 542 pages
Publisher: Springer
Publication Date: 2006-06-01


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Alan Turing's fundamental contributions to computing led to the development of modern computing technology, and his work continues to inspire researchers in computing science and beyond. This book is the definitive collection of commemorative essays, and the distinguished contributors have expertise in such diverse fields as artificial intelligence, natural computing, mathematics, physics, cryptology, cognitive studies, philosophy and anthropology.

The volume spans the entire rich spectrum of Turing's life, research work and legacy. New light is shed on the future of computing science by visionary Ray Kurzweil. Notable contributions come from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, and the distinguished logician Martin Davis, who provides a first critical essay on an emerging and controversial field termed hypercomputation. A special feature of the book is the play by Valeria Patera which tackles the scandal surrounding the last apple, and presents as an enigma the life, death and destiny of the man who did so much to decipher the Enigma code during the Second World War.

Other chapters are modern reappraisals of Turing's work on computability, and deal with the major philosophical questions raised by the Turing Test, while the book also contains essays addressing his less well-known ideas on Fibonacci phyllotaxis and connectionism.

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Authors: Nicholas Henderson.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Phoenix Press
Publication Date: 2002-10


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