Perspectives On The Computer Revolution

This is a completely revised and updated edition of this text designed to introduce students to the historical, intellectual and social context of computers. Although the majority of the chapters in this edition are new, the original criteria for selecting essays has been retained. The text retains the historical pieces and adds new material on artifical intelligence, the human-computer interface, the intellectual importance of computing, and the social imapct of computer technology.

This is a completely revised and updated edition of this text designed to introduce students to the historical, intellectual and social context of computers. Although the majority of the chapters in this edition are new, the original criteria for selecting essays has been retained. The text retains the historical pieces and adds new material on artifical intelligence, the human-computer interface, the intellectual importance of computing, and the social imapct of computer technology.

This text is designed to introduce students to the historical, intellectual and social context of computers and their development.

During the 1980s and into this decade, U.S. businesses poured billions of dollars into computers and other information technology. Yet the productivity performance of the U.S. economy in the 1980s remained lackluster--especially in the service sector--leading many observers to suspect that companies were not getting their money's worth from these high-tech investments. At the same time, academic research found little evidence of a productivity payoff. But have the tables now turned? With an apparent improvement in productivity in recent years, much academic and popular opinion now suggests that the payback is at hand or just around the corner. As the nation embarks on a major effort to develop an Information Superhighway, it is critical for policymakers, opinion leaders, and others to understand the contribution and role of information technology in the economy during recent decades. This book provides a straightforward guide to the economic issues underlying the debates about these issues, using quantitative and historical analysis, supplemented with interviews of small and large service-sector companies. To set the stage, Daniel Sichel reviews the debates over the role of computers and summarizes the essential facts about computer use, with a particular emphasis on software. Going beyond basic facts, Sichel describes an economic framework for assessing the aggregate economic impact of computers in recent decades and for looking ahead at this impact in the future. Quantitative estimates from this framework, along with supporting historical and interview evidence, place limits on the contribution of computers to the overall economy. When compared to the size of the slowdown in productivity growth in the early 1970s, the overall impact of computers appears relatively modest, in part because the share of computers in the nation's capital stock is surprisingly small. Looking ahead, Sichel also raises questions as to whether computers are likely to s

Explores the history of computers and how they have changed communications world-wide.

Based on author David A. Grier's column "In Our Time," which runs monthly in Computer magazine, Too Soon To Tell presents a collection of essays skillfully written about the computer age, an era that began February 1946. Examining ideas that are both contemporary and timeless, these chronological essays examine the revolutionary nature of the computer, the relation between machines and human institutions, and the connections between fathers and sons to provide general readers with a picture of a specific technology that attempted to rebuild human institutions in its own image.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This 25th anniversary edition of Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers -- those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers. Levy profiles the imaginative brainiacs who found clever and unorthodox solutions to computer engineering problems. They had a shared sense of values, known as "the hacker ethic," that still thrives today. Hackers captures a seminal period in recent history when underground activities blazed a trail for today's digital world, from MIT students finagling access to clunky computer-card machines to the DIY culture that spawned the Altair and the Apple II.