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Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet
: The Remarkable Story of the
Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers. So you think the
Internet is new? The basic principles were developed between 1830 and 1870, including
store-and-forward message passing, push technology, encryption (including anti-encryption
legislation!), divergent standards (ASCII/EBCDIC is only the most recent aberration!), and
yes, even crackers and those who exploited the technology fraudulently. A must-have for
anyone who is technology history buff. |
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James Burke, Connections. Unless you've been living in a
cave, or without television, you know James Burke's great program, Connections. This book
is a delightful romp through the history of technology, showing that no
technology can exist in a vacuum, and the seemingly least important piece of knowledge can
have an incredible impact when combined with other, perhaps equally irrelevant, pieces of
information. |
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Hardback edition, $22.00
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Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire. Yes, there
are really people out there who believe that the computer chip is a gift of an advanced
alien race because "we" could not conceive to anything like it. The modern
computer chip is a mere evolution of the point-contact transistor. And that is
the evolution of a lot of hard work by a lot of pioneers. This is a great story of the
history of the development of the transistor.
Everyone who is interested in where computers came from should read
this story.
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Paperback edition, $12.00
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Hardback edition, $18.20.
Audio casette, $20.00. |
Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning. If
you don't read this book about the creation of the first personal
computer, you're missing one of the great documentaries of our profession.
I'm biased, of course; many of the personalities in this book are friends
of mine. Jim Mitchell, Ed McCreight, and I were part of a team doing early
interactive languages at CMU back in 1967-1969. Chuck Geschke was one of
the members of the BLISS language group that was creating an optimizing
compiler, of which I was the first user outside the implementation group.
I knew Alan Kay and many of the others through them. This is a saga of
triumph and ultimate failure of a path in history, but which created
Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, the entire laser printer industry, and developed
most of the key ideas which we now take for granted, including overlapping
windows, WYSIWYG editing, and laptop computers.
Although slightly marred by a few instances of poor fact-checking (the
PDP-11 is said to be the instruction-set-compatible successor to the
PDP-10 for example), it is a page-turner of the best sort; I read it in
two sittings, cover-to-cover. It is a successor to the smaller, less
comprehensive Fumbling the Future: How Xerox invented, then ignored,
the first personal computer.
It is available in hardback
($18.20), paperback,
and even an abridged audio
casette edition. |
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Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander.
Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal
Computer. This was the first and original sad tale of technological
mismanagement, or why, as a computer company, Xerox was a good copier
company. It is not as thorough, and is a bit more biased (against Xerox)
than Dealers of Lightning, but it is interesting to see how the
perspective changed over the decade or so between the two books (the book is
listed as copyright 1999, but the first edition was sometime in the late
1980s). If you are compulsive and want to collect everything, get this. If
you just want to read about the PARC disaster, just get
Dealers of
Lightning.
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John Brunner, Shockwave Rider. Before the Internet (when the
ArpaNet itself was embryonic--we had been using email only a very small number of years
when Brunner started writing this book, which was published in 1975), before Robert Tappan
Morris, and before "hackers", there was John Brunner. Every once in a while, a
SF writer hits the future nearly dead-on. A must for any serious computer person. (Yes, I
know it is science fiction, but it is also history of technology!) |
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Eric S. Raymond, The New Hacker's Dictionary (3rd edition).
If you're a computer professional, you must have this book. It is not only a
funny book, but it explains a lot of the terms you hear occasionally without explanation
because they come from another computer culture than your own. The jargon of CMU, MIT,
Stanford, IBM, and Great Britain computer people, and lots of others, appears here. I have
a certain interest in this book since I was one of the major contributors (no, I don't get
a penny, so this isn't a plug for me). Check out the definition of "bug". The
story is about "your editor discovered" that the original Grace Murray Hopper
bug was not, as an early draft suggested, at the Smithsonian, but as a consequence of the
research now is. The way he discovered it was that I knew it wasn't, and tracked it down
at NSWC, so I am responsible for the Smithsonian having the most famous computer bug in
history, an accomplishment I feel quite proud of. For the truly serious geek, it is
also available in hardcover. |
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Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague : Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out
of Balance. We live in a precarious age: while antibiotics have conditioned
us to think that all diseases are curable, we know now that they are not. No zone of
pestilence is more than about 16 hours from anywhere else in the world. Even such
apparently beneficial techniques such as baboon heart transplants have high risks. This
book explores some of the issues that I, for one, hope we never have to deal with. But
they make you stop and think. |
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Richard Preston, The
Hot Zone. Ebola in the United States? Yes! We missed a
disaster by only the greatest of good fortune. Here is the story of Ebola
and its related viruses, such as Marburg. There was an accident in the
labs in Reston, Virginia. The only thing that saved the country from a
serious disaster was the strain of Ebola, known now as Ebola Reston, was
apparently not virulent in humans. |
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Richard Preston, The Cobra Event. This is an odd book. The
writing is actually sort of poor, but the topic is fascinating, in the same way that books
about nuclear war are fascinating. In spite of the rather amateurish writing, this is a
book I read in nearly one sitting. I could have done without some of the more clinical
details of how an autopsy is performed, but as a study of technology run amok it is a fine
example of classic "hard" science fiction--even if it isn't billed as such. I
hope he keeps writing; if he masters his writing ability as well has he has mastered the
science he can be a truly great writer of techno-thrillers. |
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hardbound
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trade paperback (shown) |
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Richard Preston, The
Demon in the Freezer: A True Story. Preston may not be a
"story writer" in the sense of a novel (see The
Cobra Event), but as someone who documents true stories, he is
unequalled. Remember the anthrax scare of 2001? And the FBI's analysis of
the fact that it was the work of some lone rogue scientist working in his
(presumably his) basement? This documentation dispels that myth--and does
not do justice to the nut cases who are persecuting a legitimate scientist
because he happened to once be involved in bioweapon research (he is now
unemployable, and entirely due to one unfounded and easily disproved
rumor). Read all about it. And don't believe this was the work of a lone
individual. As this book explains, there is no question this was
weapons-grade anthrax! Be prepared for a long day: this is a real
page-turner.
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Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and
History:.... The
entire title is very long, and even amazon.com truncates it. This is a
reproduction of a book printed in the 1930s (with some very odd
typography--strange letter spacings all over the place), but is a fascinating history of
the effect of plagues and disease on our modern world, by how the world in the past was
changed. More battles were lost to dysentery, cholera, and malaria than to military might.
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Ken Alibek, Biohazard. As the
cover promises, learn about the Russian bioweapons program from the man
who ran it. And learn about how poorly the security on the products of
this program is. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Ken Alibek (the Anglicization
of his real name) defected to the United States after spending most of his
life creating bioweapons. The insider view of what was really happening in
violation of all international treaties.
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Jonathan
B. Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future
Threat of Smallpox. Smallpox was once one of the most
feared diseases in the world. It has been eradicated (except for those
samples maintained in freezers all
over the world). Smallpox killed three times as many people as wars
during the last century. And it may yet again.
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John Brunner, Shockwave Rider. Before the Internet (when the
ArpaNet itself was embryonic--we had been using email only a very small number of years
when Brunner started writing this book, which was published in 1975), before Robert Tappan
Morris, and before "hackers", there was John Brunner. Every once in a while, a
SF writer hits the future nearly dead-on. A must for any serious computer person. |
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Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. One of the
genuinely funniest books I've read in SF in a long time, this is also a
reasonably accurate portrayal of a virtual reality universe. A thoroughly
enjoyable story. Almost as amusing as one of his other books, Zodiac,
which left me laughing out loud in the airplane where I was reading it.
You know you're on a streak when you have two books by the same author
that rank among the funniest you've ever read; reading both in the same
year is a bonus. |
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Neal Stephenson, Zodiac. This is the
funniest science fiction book I've read in many years. It is probably a
bad book to read on an airplane (see my review above). Not even
Terry Pratchett can match Stephenson for giggles-per-book, to give you a
calibration. |
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Algis Budrys, Michaelmas. Alas, this classic is out of
print, although amazon.com does support ordering out-of-print books. I
found the key plot twist a bit weak, but for computer people and conspiracy buffs this is
a must-read. Shockwave Rider came out in 1975, this book came out in 1977. Who really
controls the world? Find out... |
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Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. A long,
occasionally tedious, book which wraps in and around encryption
technology. Also it is good science fiction. But its portrayal of the
Canonical Computer Geek (or J. Random Hacker, as defined in The New
Hacker's Dictionary) is hysterical, and like most of Stephenson's work
that I've read, his Way With Words is a marvel. Again, it has been many
years since I've read science fiction that makes me laugh out loud, even
on airplanes. Stephenson, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett are the only
recent writers who have managed that. This is, in spite of the fact that
it is probably too long, is still a great read, and should be read by any
SF enthusiast who is into computers (or computer enthusiast who is into
SF). |
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Amy Lowenstein, For
Grandmas Who Do Windows
OK, so it isn't a programming book. But it is good, especially for its
intended audience. Some of us even have mothers or grandmothers who are
trying to learn the computer (for example, I got a call from my
80-year-old mother who was concerned that the computer had done something
illegal...and it even said it did!)
I worked with Amy over 20 years ago, when she was
producing a useful guide on Mideast literature. She used my program, one
of the earliest publish-from-database programs around, to create the book,
including its various indices and cross-references. Diana Bajek was her
primary developer, and I added a lot of features to the program to support
the Mideast literature project. It was neat to see her name come around
again in an article in our local paper, telling about this book. So I made
contact with her and we had a pleasant chat. At 75, she knows a great deal
more about electronic documentation than most of the creators of said
documentation. |
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The Joseph M. Newcomer Co. is an amazon.com
Associate.