Authors: Matt Curtin.
Hardcover, 291 pages
Publisher: Springer
Publication Date: 2005-02-16
Edition: 1

Reviews :

   

In the 1960s, it became increasingly clear that more and more information was going to be stored on computers, not on pieces of paper. With these changes in technology and the ways it was used came a need to protect both the systems and the information. For the next ten years, encryption systems of varying strengths were developed, but none proved to be rigorous enough. In 1973, the NBS put out an open call for a new, stronger encryption system that would become the new federal standard. Several years later, IBM responded with a system called Lucifer that came to simply be known as DES (data encryption standard).

The strength of an encryption system is best measured by the attacks it is able to withstand, and because DES was the federal standard, many tried to test its limits. (It should also be noted that a number of cryptographers and computer scientists told the NSA that DES was not nearly strong enough and would be easily hacked.) Rogue hackers, usually out to steal as much information as possible, tried to break DES. A number of "white hat" hackers also tested the system and reported on their successes. Still others attacked DES because they believed it had outlived its effectiveness and was becoming increasingly vulnerable. The sum total of these efforts to use all of the possible keys to break DES over time made for a brute force attack.

In 1996, the supposedly uncrackable DES was broken. In this captivating and intriguing book, Matt Curtin charts DES’s rise and fall and chronicles the efforts of those who were determined to master it.

...

Authors: Scott McCartney.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Publication Date: 2001-02
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    ENIAC is the story of John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, the men who built the first digital, electronic computer. Their three-year race to create the legendary ENIAC is a compelling tale of brilliance and misfortune that has never been told before.

It was the size of a three-bedroom apartment, weighed 30 tons, and cost nearly half a million dollars to build-and $650 an hour to run. But in 1945, this behemoth was the cutting edge in technology, and a herald of the digital age to come. This "little gem of a book" tells the story of this machine and the men who built it-as well as the secrecy, controversy, jealousy, and lawsuits that surrounded it-in a compelling real-life techno-thriller....

    Today's computers are fantastically complex machines, shaped by innovations dreamt up by hundreds of engineers and theorists over the last several decades. Does it even make sense, then, to ask who invented the computer? McCartney thinks so, and in ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, he's written a compelling answer to the question, crediting two relatively unsung Pennsylvanians with what is arguably the most significant invention of the century.

McCartney's heroes are Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and as he makes clear, there are those who might question the choice. Nobody doubts the pair designed and built ENIAC, the world's first fully electronic computer and a watershed in the history of computing. But for years the importance of their contribution, made during World War II and sponsored by the U.S. Army, has been downplayed. The brilliant John von Neumann's subsequent theoretical papers on computer design have made him the traditional "father of modern computing." And Eckert and Mauchly later even lost the patent on their machine when it was claimed that another early experimenter, John Atanasoff, had given them all the ideas about ENIAC that mattered.

But McCartney's meticulously researched narrative of Eckert and Mauchly's careers--covering the thrilling three years of ENIAC's construction and the frustrating decades of little recognition that followed--sets the record straight. He carefully weighs Atanasoff's claims and gives von Neumann the credit he earned for advancing computer science, but in the end he leaves no room for doubt: if anyone deserves to be remembered for inventing the computer, it's the two men whose tale he has told here so engagingly. --Julian Dibbell...

Authors:
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Publication Date: 2008-11-10


Reviews :

    A collection of scholarly essays, Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education provides an accessible theoretical introduction to the topic of complexity theory while considering its broader implications for educational change.

• Explains the contributions of complexity theory to philosophy of education, curriculum, and educational research
  
• Brings together new research by an international team of contributors
  
• Debates issues ranging from the culture of curriculum, to the implications of work of key philosophers such as Foucault and John Dewey for educational change
  
• Demonstrates how social scientists and social and education policy makers are drawing on complexity theory to answer questions such as: why is it that education decision-makers are so resistant to change; how does change in education happen; and what does it take to make these changes sustainable?
  
• Considers changes in use of complexity theory; developed principally in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, and economics, and now being applied more broadly to the social sciences and to the study of education

...

Authors: Jeremy M. Norman.
Hardcover, 899 pages
Publisher: Historyofscience.com
Publication Date: 2005-06-10


Reviews :

    From Gutenberg to the Internet presents 63 original readings from the history of computing, networking, and telecommunications arranged thematically by chapters. All of these readings were reset in one consistent typographic style for this edition. Most of the readings record basic discoveries from the 1830s through the 1960s that laid the foundation of the world of digital information in which we live. These readings, some of which are illustrated, trace historic steps from the early nineteenth century development of telegraph systems-the first data networks-through the development of the earliest general-purpose progammable computers and the earliest software, to the foundation in 1969 of ARPANET, the first national computer network that eventually became the Internet. The readings will allow you to review early developments and ideas in the history of information technology that eventually led to the convergence of computing, data networking, and telecommunications in the Internet.

The work begins with an illustrated historical introduction concerning the impact of the Internet on book culture. The introduction compares and contrasts the transition from manuscript to print initiated by Gutenberg's invention of printing by moveable type in the 15th century with the transition that began in the mid-19th century from a print-centric world to the present world in which printing co-exists with various electronic media that converged to form the Internet. I also provide a comprehensive and wide-ranging annotated timeline covering selected developments in the history of information technology from the year 100 up to 2004, and supply introductory notes to each reading. Some introductory notes contain supplementary illustrations....

Authors: Albert Borgmann.
Paperback, 282 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 2000-12-15


Reviews :

    ...

    It's remarkable how far we've traveled into the Information Age without coming up with a very good idea of what information actually is. Technologists define information as bits and bytes, but that seems too precise somehow to get at the heart of the idea. Everyday speech defines it as just about any interesting piece of news, but that seems equally vague. Holding On to Reality is a philosopher's ruminative attempt to find the sweet spot between those two understandings, feeling for an idea of information that does justice both to its deep roots in human history and its broad implications for human culture at the edge of the 21st century.

For Borgmann, information is defined as much by the mind and cultural context of the people who behold it as by the physical traces (notches on a bone, voltages on a wire) that embody it. Fleshing out that notion, he tracks the changing nature of information across the face of history--from the natural signs that mattered most to prehistoric people to the alphabets and maps that shaped ancient and medieval culture to the mechanically logical forms of information that began to emerge in modern times.

Borgmann's observations suffer somewhat when he turns his sights on present-day information technologies and the cultural changes they have wrought. His cultural conservatism shows most strongly here and, at times, comes out sounding more cranky than critical. But on the whole, his insights are supple and thought-provoking. If we are ever going to really understand where the Information Age has come from and what it's about, we'll need more books like this one. --Julian Dibbell...

Authors: Rusel DeMaria. Johnny L. Wilson.
Paperback, 328 pages
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Publication Date: 2002-04-27


Reviews :

    ..".overflowing with color screenshots, package art, reproductions of old game ads, shots of old machines, and photos of collectibles. Every picture triggers another memory, and before long you're awash in blissful recollections..."--"Computer Gaming World, August '02 ..".300 pages offer a visually compelling record of the origins and development of electronic entertainment, so buy it for the pictures of rare game boxes and screens... it's a great nostalgia trip for old-timers and a primer on the industry's storied past for the less ancient reader."--"Computer Games, August '02 From pinball to PlayStation, this photo-packed volume chronicles the history of electronic games--which has become both a billion dollar industry as well as a cultural phenomenon. Featuring hundreds of interviews with game creators and thousands of never-before-seen photos from the early days, this book honors the games that have captivated youngsters and the young-at-heart for more than 30 years--making this the ultimate tribute to electronic games....

Authors: Margaret Boden.
Paperback, 1712 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 2008-08-15


Reviews :

    The development of cognitive science is one of the most remarkable and fascinating intellectual achievements of the modern era. The quest to understand the mind is as old as recorded human thought; but the progress of modern science has offered new methods and techniques which have revolutionized this enquiry. Oxford University Press now presents a masterful history of cognitive science, told by one of its most eminent practitioners.
Cognitive science is the project of understanding the mind by modeling its workings. Psychology is its heart, but it draws together various adjoining fields of research, including artificial intelligence; neuroscientific study of the brain; philosophical investigation of mind, language, logic, and understanding; computational work on logic and reasoning; linguistic research on grammar, semantics, and communication; and anthropological explorations of human similarities and differences. Each discipline, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works, how it developed - how it is even possible. The key distinguishing characteristic of cognitive science, Boden suggests, compared with older ways of thinking about the mind, is the notion of understanding the mind as a kind of machine. She traces the origins of cognitive science back to Descartes's revolutionary ideas, and follows the story through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the pioneers of psychology and computing appear. Then she guides the reader through the complex interlinked paths along which the study of the mind developed in the twentieth century. Cognitive science, in Boden's broad conception, covers a wide range of aspects of mind: not just 'cognition' in the sense of knowledge or reasoning, but emotion, personality, social communication, and even action. In each area of investigation, Boden introduces the key ideas and the people who developed them.
No one else could tell this story as Boden can: she has been an active participant in cognitive science since the 1960s, and has known many of the key figures personally. Her narrative is written in a lively, swift-moving style, enriched by the personal touch of someone who knows the story at first hand. Her history looks forward as well as back: it is her conviction that cognitive science today--and tomorrow--cannot be properly understood without a historical perspective. Mind as Machine will be a rich resource for anyone working on the mind, in any academic discipline, who wants to know how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed....

Authors: Steve Thompson. Peter C. Smith.
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Classic Publications
Publication Date: 2009-01-15


Reviews :

    Computer flight simulation is one of the fastest growing modern hobbies, with thousands of 'pilots' or 'simmers' going online every day to pit their flying skills against their computers or opponents from all over the world, in many different scenarios, both current and historical. 'Flight simmers', in terms of interest, can be placed into three categories: general aviation, airliners, and combat simulation. The one common theme is the desire to be able to improve their flying skills.
This is the definitive guide for flight simmers interested in combat simulation with easily accessible information and colorful illustrations that can be used as a guide to the methods of air combat. The book covers tactics for all general combat sims so flyers of Microsoft, IL-2, Red Baron 2, Knights of the Sky, and many more will find it to be a valuable resource. It also covers various theatres of combat, therefore flyers of WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq campaigns, etc, will relate to the subject after all, the tactics remain the same. Using state-of-the-art digital illustration techniques, the book shows how and when to employ the best maneuvers to beat both the computer and other players. Diagrams show both the maneuver itself and the actual methods used on the joystick. Further sections cover ground-attack, mission planning, and the historical perspective. It will be relevant to those at an entry level and those who have been in online gaming communities for years. The text and diagrams are supported by historical narratives derived from real combat pilots, design histories on key aircraft, and enviable full-color profile artworks....

Authors: Dorothy E. Denning.
Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Publication Date: 1998-12-20
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    *This book provides a comprehensive and detailed look at information warfare: computer crime, cybercrime, and information terrorism. It describes attacks on information systems through theft, deception, or sabotage, and demonstrates the countermeasures being mounted to defeat these threats. Focusing on the criminals and information terrorists whose depredations include information-based threats to nations, corporations, and individuals, Denning places cybercrime within a broader context, integrating the various kinds of information crime, and the countermeasures against it, into a methodology-based framework. *Among the topics included are government use of information warfare for law enforcement investigations and for military and intelligence operations; also, the conflicts arising in the areas of free speech and encryption. The author discusses offensive information warfare, including acquisition of information, deceptive exploitation of information, and denial of access to information; and also addresses defensive information warfare, specifically, information security principles and practices. The book features coverage that is both broad and deep, illustrating cyberspace threats with real-world examples....

Authors: Paul E. Ceruzzi.
Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2008-04-30


Reviews :

    Much of the world's Internet management and governance takes place in a corridor extending west from Washington, DC, through northern Virginia toward Washington Dulles International Airport. Much of the United States' military planning and analysis takes place here as well. At the center of that corridor is Tysons Corner—an unincorporated suburban crossroads once dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, the government contractors and high- tech firms—companies like DynCorp, CACI, Verisign, and SAIC—that now populate this corridor have created an "Internet Alley" off the Washington Beltway. In Internet Alley, Paul Ceruzzi examines this compact area of intense commercial development and describes its transformation into one of the most dynamic and prosperous regions in the country.

Ceruzzi explains how a concentration of military contractors carrying out weapons analysis, systems engineering, operations research, and telecommunications combined with suburban growth patterns to drive the region's development. The dot-com bubble's burst was offset here, he points out, by the government's growing national security-related need for information technology. Ceruzzi looks in detail at the nature of the work carried out by these government contractors and how it can be considered truly innovative in terms of both technology and management.

Today in Tysons Corner, clusters of sleek new office buildings housing high-technology companies stand out against the suburban landscape, and the upscale Tysons Galleria Mall is neighbor to a government-owned radio tower marked by a sign warning visitors not to photograph or sketch it. Ceruzzi finds that a variety of perennially relevant issues intersect here, making it both a literal and figurative crossroads: federal support of scientific research, the shift of government activities to private contractors, local politics of land use, and the postwar movement from central cities to suburbs....