The Computer Revolution

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

This timely book examines the computer revolution as it relates to each of its main areas of application. The author presents a well-honed analysis of the expectations and realisations of this extraordinary device. Revolutions seldom proceed according to a preset plan and the computer revolution is no exception. This book is essential reading for gaining an understanding of where they are now and where they may be expected to be tomorrow. Contents includes: Preface; Revolutionary Promises; The Quest for Machines that Think, Learn and Teach; Computers in the Classroom; Computers in the Classroom: Educators' Approaches; Computers and Intuition; The Romance of Computers; Educational Software; Computer Games; The Electronic Classroom; Computers for Research; Armageddon: The Year 2000; and Conclusions.

The forces that shaped Canada's digital innovations in the postwar period. After World War II, other major industrialized nations responded to the technological and industrial hegemony of the United States by developing their own design and manufacturing competence in digital electronic technology. In this book John Vardalas describes the quest for such competence in Canada, exploring the significant contributions of the civilian sector but emphasizing the role of the Canadian military in shaping radical technological change. As he shows, Canada's determination to be an active participant in research and development work on advanced weapons systems, and in the testing of those weapons systems, was a cornerstone of Canadian technological development during the years 1945-1980. Vardalas presents case studies of such firms as Ferranti-Canada, Sperry Gyroscope of Canada, and Control Data of Canada. In contrast to the standard nationalist interpretation of Canadian subsidiaries of transnational corporations as passive agents, he shows them to have been remarkably innovative and explains how their aggressive programs to develop all-Canadian digital R&D and manufacturing capacities influenced technological development in the United States and in Great Britain. While underlining the unprecedented role of the military in the creation of peacetime scientific and technical skills, Vardalas also examines the role of government and university research programs, including Canada's first computerized systems for mail sorting and airline reservations. Overall, he presents a nuanced account of how national economic, political, and corporate forces influenced the content, extent, and direction of digital innovation in Canada.

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 new release of the original 1962 edition.

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.