Computers
03 Oct 1994 12:00Their history, from the Antikythera machine, primitive automata and simulacra through Babbage to today. Effects on society, art, thought. The new idea that Nature is in some sense ``computational'' (which strikes me as either obvious or absurd, depending on how we take the term). Utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears. Programming.
See also: Computation, Automata and Langauges; Programming; Computer Networks; Biological Computers
- Recommended:
- Abelson and Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [Foolishly sold.]
- David Gelernter, Mirror Worlds: The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox and What It Will Mean
- Larry Gonick, The Cartoon Guide to the Computer [Formerly titled Cartoon Guide to Computer Science]
- Lewis and Papadimitriou, Elements of the Theory of Computation
- Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial
- To read:
- Jon Agar, The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer [Blurb]
- Bea (ed.) Mirrors of Minds (educational computing)
- Bolter, Turing's Man
- Colin Burke and Michael Buckland, Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex
- Computing Before Computers
- James W. Cortada, The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries
- Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America
- Kenneth Flamm, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Technology
- B. J. Fogg, Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do
- James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
- Goodman, Digital Visions
- Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox-PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
- Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater
- Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks
- Lauren Ruth Wiener, Digital Woes: Why We Should Not Depend on Software [Blurb]
- Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine
