Computers & Internet Books
Page 1 of 5 - 120 results
Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat
Carlin, John P.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $9.51
The inside story of how America's enemies launched a cyber war against us - and how we've learned to fight back.With each passing year, the internet-linked attacks on America's interests have grown in both frequency and severity. Overmatched by our military, countries like North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia have found us vulnerable in cyberspace. The "Code War" is upon us.In this dramatic book, former Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin takes readers to the front lines of a global but little-understood fight as the Justice Department and the FBI chases down hackers, online terrorist recruiters, and spies. Today, as our entire economy goes digital, from banking to manufacturing to transportation, the potential targets for our enemies multiply. This firsthand account is both a remarkable untold story and a warning of dangers yet to come.
The Web Application Defender's Cookbook
Barnett, Ryan C.
(Softcover)
List Price: $50.00 Sale: $9.32
The top-selling book Web Application Hacker's Handbook showed how attackers and hackers identify and attack vulnerable live web applications. This new Web Application Defender's Cookbook is the perfect counterpoint to that book: it shows you how to defend. Authored by a highly credentialed defensive security expert, this new book details defensive security methods and can be used as courseware for training network security personnel, web server administrators, and security consultants. Each "recipe" shows you a way to detect and defend against malicious behavior and provides working code examples for the ModSecurity web application firewall module. Topics include identifying vulnerabilities, setting hacker traps, defending different access points, enforcing application flows, and much more.
Designing an Internet (Information Policy)
Clark, David D.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.95 Sale: $9.11
Overview not currently available
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $8.87
Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world - provided we ask the right questions.By the end of an average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential - revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health - both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.
Beyond the Valley
Srinivasan, Ramesh
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.95 Sale: $8.63
How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the “design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists.. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.
The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe
Poundstone, William
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.00 Sale: $8.63
An equation that foretells the future is transforming everything we know about life, business, and the universe.In the 18th century, the British minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes devised a theorem that allowed him to assign probabilities to events that had never happened before. It languished in obscurity for centuries until computers came along and made it easy to crunch the numbers. Now, as the foundation of big data, Bayes' formula has become a linchpin of the digital economy.But here's where things get really interesting: Bayes' theorem can also be used to lay odds on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence; on whether we live in a Matrix-like counterfeit of reality; on the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum theory being correct; and on the biggest question of all: how long will humanity survive?The Doomsday Calculation tells how Silicon Valley's profitable formula became a controversial pivot of contemporary thought. Drawing on interviews with thought leaders around the globe, it's the story of a group of intellectual mavericks who are challenging what we thought we knew about our place in the universe. The Doomsday Calculation is compelling reading for anyone interested in our culture and its future.
User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play
Kuang, Cliff
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.63
In User Friendly, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been - and continues to be - remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change - an underappreciated but essential history that’s pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time - and you’ll never interact with technology the same way again.
The Deep Learning Revolution
Sejnowski, Terrence J.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.95 Sale: $8.44
How deep learning—from Google Translate to driverless cars to personal cognitive assistants—is changing our lives and transforming every sector of the economy.The deep learning revolution has brought us driverless cars, the greatly improved Google Translate, fluent conversations with Siri and Alexa, and enormous profits from automated trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Deep learning networks can play poker better than professional poker players and defeat a world champion at Go. In this book, Terry Sejnowski explains how deep learning went from being an arcane academic field to a disruptive technology in the information economy.Sejnowski played an important role in the founding of deep learning, as one of a small group of researchers in the 1980s who challenged the prevailing logic-and-symbol based version of AI. The new version of AI Sejnowski and others developed, which became deep learning, is fueled instead by data. Deep networks learn from data in the same way that babies experience the world, starting with fresh eyes and gradually acquiring the skills needed to navigate novel environments. Learning algorithms extract information from raw data; information can be used to create knowledge; knowledge underlies understanding; understanding leads to wisdom. Someday a driverless car will know the road better than you do and drive with more skill; a deep learning network will diagnose your illness; a personal cognitive assistant will augment your puny human brain. It took nature many millions of years to evolve human intelligence; AI is on a trajectory measured in decades. Sejnowski prepares us for a deep learning future.
Influence: How Social Media Influencers are Shaping our Digital Future
McCorquodale, Sara
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $8.44
A detailed review of what businesses need to know about influencer strategies, social media and how digital communication works.Digital influencing is one of the most exciting and disruptive new industries, forecast to be worth billions by 2020, but those charged with making this an effective part of their digital strategy rarely understand how this emergent industry works. When it comes to online growth, digital influencers are now consistently outperforming traditional media and brand advertising, even if much of what they do remains a mystery to many people.Sara McCorquodale is the UK's leading authority on the influencer space, and this new book demystifies exactly how digital influence works, interrogates the phenomenon, analyzes its problems, and forecasts its future. A compelling and deeply insightful book, this will be a must-read for anyone whose business success is dependent on prospering online.In Influence, readers will gain a foundation of knowledge into how and why digital communication has become so dominated by influencers, as well as gaining invaluable, never-before-heard insights from the influencers themselves. They will understand how digital trends emerge, the building blocks that make bloggers, vloggers and instagrammers so compelling, and why the context in which influencer marketing emerged is so closely linked to its ongoing success.Thanks to Sara's independent analysis of influencer media and marketing, readers will finish the book with a clear understanding as to the problems now faced by businesses and brands around the world, and how such issues can be identified, tackled and overcome.
The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
Harris, Blake J.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $8.23
The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus, its quest for virtual reality, and its founder's contentious battle for political freedom against Facebook, from the bestselling author of Console Wars.In The History of the Future, Harris once again deep-dives into a tech drama for the ages to expertly tell the larger-than-life true story of Oculus, the virtual reality company founded in 2012 that - less than two years later - would catch the attention of Mark Zuckerberg and wind up being bought by Facebook for over $2 billion dollars.This incredible underdog story begins with inventor Palmer Luckey, then just a nineteen-year-old dreamer, living alone in a camper trailer in Long Beach, California. At the time, virtual reality - long-hailed as the ultimate technology - was so costly and experimental that it was unattainable outside of a few research labs and military training facilities. But with the founding of Oculus, and the belief that his tantalizing vision of the future could one day be more than science fiction, Luckey put everything he had into creating a device that would allow gamers like him to step into virtual worlds and, in doing so, hopefully kickstart a VR revolution. With the help of an industry legend, a serial entrepreneur, and a slew of colorful characters - including those behind gaming sensations like Doom, Words with Friends, and Guitar Hero - Luckey’s scrappy startup would finally deliver the dream of immersive and affordable virtual reality to consumers, leading geeks and gamers to be excited in a way that they hadn’t been in years, and tech firms and investors scrambling to get in on the action before it was too late.Over the course of three years (and with unprecedented access from Oculus and Facebook), Harris conducted hundreds of interviews with key players in the VR revolution - including Luckey, his partners, and their cult of dreamers - to weave together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns, and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a supremely accessible, entertaining look at the birth of a new multi-billion-dollar industry; one full of heroes, villains, and twists at every corner. Take, for instance, Harris’ own discovery while writing this story. When he started this endeavor, he had no idea that this tale would somehow involve Donald Trump, billion-dollar lawsuits, illegal practices, and end with Luckey - eventually ousted from Facebook - as one of the most polarizing figures in Silicon Valley.
The Power of Convergence: Linking Business Strategies and Technology Decisions to Create Sustainable Success
Hoque, Faisal
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $8.23
From technology giants to major airlines to government agencies, the landscape is littered with the shells of once-promising enterprises that failed to partner technology and business. Their lost opportunities and billions wasted provide a much-needed wake-up call to businesses. In this forward-thinking guide, author Faisal Hoque adopts that call to teach readers how to capture and leverage the power of business-technology convergence. The Power of Convergence provides the framework and mechanisms for uniting business and technology, seeding horizontal collaborations and partnering opportunities, and capturing strategic possibilities created through convergence. Readers will also discover the importance of not only laying the groundwork for the role of technology in business, but also institutionalizing operational practices to pave the way for continued success. No technology should be developed or deployed without a full vision of how it serves the greater needs of the company. Rather, technology should be so tightly intertwined with strategy that the two drive each other, with each at the ready when market opportunity materializes--however suddenly. With compelling examples of successes and failures at organizations from Ford Motor Company to the FBI, The Power of Convergence provides business leaders with the tools they need to overcome the business/technology disconnect and utilize these both to achieve sustainable results.
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
Mitchell, Melanie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $7.83
No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scientist, now reveals AI’s turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it.In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant models of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought underpinning recent achievements. She meets with fellow experts such as Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the modern classic Gödel, Escher, Bach, who explains why he is “terrified” about the future of AI. She explores the profound disconnect between the hype and the actual achievements in AI, providing a clear sense of what the field has accomplished and how much further it has to go.Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell’s humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI, its quest for “human-level” intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.
Block City: How to Build Incredible Worlds in Minecraft
Kearney, Kirsten
(Softcover)
List Price: $22.50 Sale: $7.83
Master builders present thirty-six amazing Minecraft projects, ranging from the contemporary metropolis to past civilizations, and from fantasy kingdoms to futuristic zones. They offer advice about planning and design, as well as step-by-step tutorials for a range of structures at different levels of difficulty, including buildings, vehicles, streets, and more. Whether you're a seasoned mega builder or are considering putting together the smallest hut, prepare to be inspired!
The Innovators
Isaacson, Walter
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $7.83
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It's also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen.
The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World
Shapiro, Jordan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $7.83
A provocative look at the new, digital landscape of childhood and how to navigate it.In The New Childhood, Jordan Shapiro provides a hopeful counterpoint to the fearful hand-wringing that has come to define our narrative around children and technology. Drawing on groundbreaking research in economics, psychology, philosophy, and education, The New Childhood shows how technology is guiding humanity toward a bright future in which our children will be able to create new, better models of global citizenship, connection, and community.Shapiro offers concrete, practical advice on how to parent and educate children effectively in a connected world, and provides tools and techniques for using technology to engage with kids and help them learn and grow. He compares this moment in time to other great technological revolutions in humanity's past and presents entertaining micro-histories of cultural fixtures: the sandbox, finger painting, the family dinner, and more. But most importantly, The New Childhood paints a timely, inspiring and positive picture of today's children, recognizing that they are poised to create a progressive, diverse, meaningful, and hyper-connected world that today's adults can only barely imagine.
Now You're Talking: Human Conversation From the Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence
Cox, Trevor
(Paperback)
List Price: $25.99 Sale: $7.83
Being able to speak is what makes us human. If you’ve ever felt the shock of listening to a recording of your own voice, you realise how important your voice is to your personal identity. We judge others – and whether we trust them – not just by their words but by the way they talk: their intonation, their pitch, their accent.Now You’re Talking explores the full range of our voice – how we speak and how we sing; how our vocal anatomy works; what happens when things go wrong; and how technology enables us to imitate and manipulate the human voice. Trevor Cox talks to vocal coaches who help people to develop their new voice after a gender change; to record producers whose use of technology has transformed the singing voice; and to computer scientists who replicate the human voice in their development of Artificial Intelligence.Beginning with the Neanderthals, Now You’re Talking takes us all the way to the digital age – with the frightening prospect that we may soon hear ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ more frequently than a friendly ‘Hello, how are you?’ in the street.
The Social CEO: How Social Media Can Make You A Stronger Leader
Corbet, Damian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $7.83
Insights into why CEOs need to get social for business success, and how they can become effective social leaders.While business leaders may feel that it's enough to hire social media managers and amend their marketing strategies, Damian Corbet shows why organizations need to do more to succeed in the Social Age--why CEOs need to "get social" to survive.The Social CEO sets out to educate and inspire senior leaders to embrace the Social Age, teaching them the hows and whys of utilizing social media in order to make them stronger leaders. Social CEOs can effectively encourage engagement from their employees as well as other stakeholders and customers; they're better able to communicate their organization's objectives and values, gauge the climate in which they operate and improve their brand image.Offering invaluable contributions from industry-recognized experts in social business, The Social CEO explores the many aspects of leading in the Social Age, such as storytelling, personal branding, managing risk and public relations. With chapters also written by practicing "social CEOs" working across a variety of sectors, from healthcare to sport, the book provides a wealth of insight into how social media can be used to gain a competitive advantage.
Uncanny Valley
Wiener, Anna
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $7.83
The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital ageIn her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener - stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial - left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.
The Web Designer's Idea Book (Volume 3)
McNeil, Patrick
(Softcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $7.83
Featuring more than 650 examples, this third volume of The Web Designer's Idea Book is packed with visual inspiration for creating top-notch web design. Web design expert Patrick McNeil, author of the popular Web Designer's Idea Book series, is back with the latest examples of the best design on the web today.Arranged thematically, this guide puts important topics like technology, design styles, elements, site types and site structure at your fingertips. This new volume also includes a detailed discussion of the various content management systems available to help you find the best platform for your project.An indispensable reference, this book provides you with the latest in themes, styles and trends you need to keep your projects relevant in the fast-paced and every-changing world of web design.
Make Noise: A Creator's Guide to Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling
Nuzum, Eric
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.95 Sale: $7.56
Make Noise brings all the wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking that any individual or business needs to make a successful podcast. Eric Nuzum identifies core principles - create empathetically, i.e., think like the audience listens, and stay focused on what’s unique to you and what you have to say. He helps readers come up with a “Ten Word Description” that will guide them throughout the creative process, and then gets into how-tos - how to develop character, story, voice; how to conduct an effective interview; how to be mindful of the limitations of audio (be more like Hemingway than Faulkner). Here are the rules of storytelling, advice on how to test-drive an idea (make six individual lunch dates, talk it over with each, and by the end see how you’ve refined your thinking), and, when it’s all ready, how to develop your audience.Make Noise won’t tell you what microphone to buy. But its insights and guidance will help readers better express themselves as an audio storyteller.
Artificial Intelligence: An Illustrated History (Sterling Illustrated Histories)
Pickover, Clifford A.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.95 Sale: $6.95
From medieval robots and Boolean algebra to facial recognition, artificial neural networks, and adversarial patches, this fascinating history takes readers on a vast tour through the world of artificial intelligence. Award-winning author Clifford A. Pickover (The Math Book, The Physics Book, Death & the Afterlife) explores the historic and current applications of AI in such diverse fields as computing, medicine, popular culture, mythology, and philosophy, and considers the enduring threat to humanity should AI grow out of control. Across 100 illustrated entries, Pickover provides an entertaining and informative look into when artificial intelligence began, how it developed, where it's going, and what it means for the future of human-machine interaction.
Creative Projects with Raspberry Pi
Freeman, Will
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $6.95
An illustrated guide to everything you need to know about Raspberry Pi.The Raspberry Pi is the most versatile, affordable, and accessible computer ever made - and you don't need any coding skills to use it. Creative Projects with Raspberry Pi shows dozens of the most remarkable and ingenious ways to use your Raspberry Pi and will appeal to Pi fans of all ages.• Features 35 inspiring inventions, including instructions for 10 buildable projects• Accompanied by a dedicated website containing all the code you need• Expert tips and secrets from Raspberry Pi pros around the world
The Fall of the Human Empire
Bouee, Charles-Edouard
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.00 Sale: $6.95
The little-known history of artificial intelligence--told by a robot named Lucie.Two trends are coming together: exponential growth in the processing power of supercomputers, and new software which can copy the way neurons in the human brain work and give machines the ability to learn. Smart systems will soon be commonplace in homes, businesses, factories, administrations, hospitals and the armed forces. How autonomous will they be? How free to make decisions? What place will human beings still have in a world controlled by robots? After the atom bomb, is artificial intelligence the second lethal weapon capable of destroying mankind, its inventor?The Fall of the Human Empire traces the little-known history of artificial intelligence from the standpoint of a robot called Lucie. She--or it?--recounts her adventures and reveals the mysteries of her long journey with humans, and provides a thought-provoking storyline of what developments in A.I. may mean for both humans and robots.
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
Dear, Brian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $6.95
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Not only did PLATO engineers make significant hardware breakthroughs with plasma displays and touch screens but PLATO programmers also came up with a long list of software innovations: chat rooms, instant messaging, message boards, screen savers, multiplayer games, online newspapers, interactive fiction, and emoticons. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online community that was to follow in its footsteps. The Friendly Orange Glow is the first history to recount in fascinating detail the remarkable accomplishments and inspiring personal stories of the PLATO community. The addictive nature of PLATO both ruined many a college career and launched pathbreaking multimillion-dollar software products. Its development, impact, and eventual disappearance provides an instructive case study of technological innovation and disruption, project management, and missed opportunities. Above all, The Friendly Orange Glow at last reveals new perspectives on the origins of social computing and our internet-infatuated world.
Page 1 of 5 - 120 results
To Top