Authors: Alice Rowe Burks.
Hardcover, 415 pages
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Publication Date: 2003-01


Reviews :

    In 1973, Federal District Judge Earl R Larson issued a ruling in a patent case that was to have profound and long-lasting implications for the dawning computer revolution. With meticulous research, Alice Rowe Burks examines both the trial and its aftermath, presenting telling evidence in convincing and absorbing fashion, and leaving no doubt about the actual originator of what has been called the greatest invention of the 20th century....

Authors: W. Paul Reeve.
Hardcover, 248 pages
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication Date: 2007-03-09
Edition: 1

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Authors: James Gillies. Robert Cailliau.
Paperback, 372 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 2000-01-15
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    In 1994, a computer program called the Mosaic browser transformed the Internet from an academic tool into a telecommunications revolution. Now a household name, the World Wide Web is a prominent fixture in the modern communications landscape, with tens of thousands of servers providing information to millions of users. Few people, however, realize that the Web was born at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, and that it was invented by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee.
Offering its readers an unprecedented "insider's" perspective, this new book was co-written by two CERN employees--one of whom, Robert Cailliau, was among the Web's pioneers. It tells how the idea for the Web came about at CERN, how it was developed, and how it was eventually handed over at no charge for the rest of the world to use. The first book-length account of the Web's development, How the Web was Born draws upon several interviews with the key players in this amazing story. This compelling and highly topical book is certain to interest all general readers with a taste for the Web or the Internet, as well as students and teachers of computing, technology, and applied science....

    It's hard to believe that there was a time--not long ago--when the digital fairyland of commerce, soapboxing, and pornography called the World Wide Web was just a file-sharing tool for nerds, but there's a first time for everything. How the Web Was Born, by CERN's James Gillies and Robert Cailliau, follows the trail from the dawn of ARPANet through the mid-90s, just as the Web boom was beginning to take off in earnest. That may seem like an odd ending point, but the post-1995 story has already been told ad nauseam, and the writers know how to quit while they're ahead. The story is told from widely varying viewpoints and across shifting timelines as the various players are introduced and observed; this adds some complexity to the narrative, but yields a truer picture of the team efforts required to devise and launch the Web. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee (of course), and many more, figure prominently in the interwoven tales, and are briefly summarized in an abridged cast list at the end of the book, along with a paper and electronic bibliography. The book assumes some knowledge and interest on the part of the reader and saves its big-picture context for the end, but provides reader motivation both by its subject's inherent interest and the recurrent personalization of the story. Neither textbook nor CERN propaganda, How the Web Was Born offers an engagingly networked collection of characters that, like their invention, creates something larger than the sum of its parts. --Rob Lightner ...

Authors: Herbert Bruen.
Paperback, 350 pages
Publisher: Wesleyan
Publication Date: 2004-03-30


Reviews :

    Herbert Bruen (1918-2000) was a pioneer in the development of electronic and computer music. He was recognized within and beyond the field of music as an eloquent and original contributor of ideas relating composition and systems theory, language and thought, performance and everyday life. Bruen wrote and spoke incisively on the function of the arts in our society: What are the social functions of "composer" and "listener"? What is the function of "time" in art? How does "communication" hasten the decay of new thoughts, and what significance does this have on creative and social acts?

The book includes lectures given for non-professionals, articles containing valuable new formulations and insights for professionals and an audio CD featuring Bruen's compositions. The book is an excellent resource for those interested in music composition, computer music, electronic music, music literature, 20th century music history and interdisciplinary studies in arts and sciences....

Authors: James W. Cortada. James W. Corada.
Hardcover, 344 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 1993-02-08


Reviews :

    Before the Computer fully explores the data processing industry in the United States from its nineteenth-century inception down to the period when the computer became its primary tool. As James Cortada describes what was once called the "office appliance industry," he challenges our view of the digital computer as a revolutionary technology. Cortada interprets reliance on computers as a development within an important segment of the American economy that was earlier represented largely by such instruments as typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators. He also describes how many of the practices of the office appliance industry evolved into those of the computer world. Drawing on previously unavailable industry archives, the author adds to our understanding of IBM's early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand. Focusing on the United States but also including comparative material on Europe and Asia, Before the Computer will be a unique source of knowledge about the companies that built office equipment and their enormous impact on economic life....

Authors:
Paperback, 152 pages
Publisher: Academy Press
Publication Date: 2004-04-23


Reviews :

    The old opposition between a digital culture of sensuous, ephemeral images and a tectonic culture of pragmatic building has given way to a new collaboration between the two domains, a 'digital tectonics'. Computer linked fabrication techniques of many kinds have become an integral part of the design process, while new digital tools are allowing engineers and architects to understand in far more detail the behaviour of load carrying surfaces, and to generate new architectural forms. 

Digital and computer-linked design techniques is one of the hottest topics in architecture and in an ever-expanding world of digital technology this book tackles the practical elements of the field....

Authors: Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press
Publication Date: 2001-10-01


Reviews :

    The turn of the millennium is characterized by exponential growth in everything related to communication - from the Internet and e-mail to air traffic. "The Tyranny of the Moment" deals with some of the most perplexing paradoxes of this new information age. Who would have expected that apparently time-saving technology results in time being scarcer than ever? And has this seemingly limitless access to information led to confusion rather than enlightenment? Thomas Eriksen argues that slow time - private periods where we are able to think and correspond coherently without interruption - is now one of the most precious resources that we have, and it is becoming a major political issue. Since we are now theoretically "online" 24 hours a day, we must fight for the right to be unavailable - the right to live and think more slowly. It is not only that working hours have become longer - Eriksen also shows how the logic of this new information technology has, in the space of just a few years, permeated every area of our lives. This is equally true for those living in poorer parts of the globe usually depicted as outside the reaches of the information age, as well as those in the West. Exploring phenomena such as the world wide web, wap telephones, multi-channel television and e-mail, "The Tyranny of the Moment" examines this new, non-linear and fragmented way of communicating to reveal the effect is has on working conditions in the new economy, changes in family life and, ultimately, personal identity. Eriksen argues that a culture lacking a sense of its past, and therefore of its future, is effectively static. Although solutions are suggested, he demonstrates that there is no easy way out....

Authors: Moschovitis Group.
Hardcover, 767 pages
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Publication Date: 2005-09-27


Reviews :

    Illuminating the reality of worldwide access to information, this expanded three-volume set is a one-stop resource for history, biography, and analysis of the Internet. Many communications technologies were originally pioneered as aids to people with disabilities. The earliest official use of the term 'computer hacker' emerged in the 1960s. The first e-mail was sent in 1971. The internet has revolutionized our world-without leaving home we can communicate with people in foreign countries, pay bills, even have groceries delivered! Find out how it all began. The first version of this reference won the RUSA Award for Outstanding Reference Source in 2000. Now expanded to three volumes, the new edition includes a fully revised and extended chronology volume, another of biographies, and a third of articles analyzing key Internet issues. The set also offers many fascinating tidbits about the Internet, including the fact that the phrase "surfing the internet" was coined in 1992 by librarian Jean Armour Polly in an article in the Wilson Library Bulletin. This set covers the earliest roots of the Internet, including events dating as far back as the 1800s and the invention of the telephone all the way to the founding of news agencies, the first steps toward digital computing, and the development of computing technology, telecommunications, and media. This work will be of interest to students of mass media, gender, business, and social history as well as technology....

Authors: Rusel DeMaria. Johnny L. Wilson.
Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Publication Date: 2003-12-18
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    In this lavishly illustrated full-color retrospective, discover never-before-seen photos that bring to life the people and stories behind the most popular games of all time, including Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, SimCity, Quake, Myst, Tomb Raider, and more. This is the inside scoop on the history, successes, tricks, and even failures of the entire electronic games industry....

Authors:
Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Westview Press
Publication Date: 2002-07-15


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