Computing: A Concise History Audiobook (Free)

The annals of computing could possibly be told as the storyplot of hardware and software, or the story of the web, or the story of ‘smart’ hand-held devices, with subplots involving IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. With this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi presents a broader and even more useful perspective. He identifies four main threads that operate throughout all of computing’s technological development: about Processing: A Concise History digitization–the coding of info, computation, and control in binary type, types and zeros; the convergence of multiple channels of techniques, gadgets, and machines, yielding a lot more than the amount of their parts; the stable advance of digital technology, as characterized famously by ‘Moore’s Regulation’; and the human-machine user interface. Ceruzzi manuals us through processing history, telling what sort of Bell Labs mathematician coined the word ‘digital’ in 1942 (to describe a high-speed method of calculating found in anti-aircraft devices), and recounting the introduction of the punch card (for make use of in the 1890 U.S. Census). He represents the ENIAC, built for technological and armed forces applications; the UNIVAC, the first general purpose computer; and ARPANET, the Internet’s precursor. Ceruzzi’s account traces the world-changing development of the pc from a room-size ensemble of machinery to a ‘minicomputer’ to a pc to a pocket-sized smartphone. He describes the introduction of the silicon chip, which could store ever-increasing levels of data and allowed ever-decreasing gadget size. He appointments that hotbed of creativity, Silicon Valley, and brings the storyplot up for this with the web, the internet, and social media.