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Books about technology stuff

Started by Z, April 12, 2018, 09:26:52 PM

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Z

Any you enjoy?

Masters of Doom is a fairly obvious one, covers Id right up to about the time Ion Storm collapsed.

Reading a really neat little one right now called Racing the Beam about how several games were made for the 2600 and the huge constraints they faced, never gets too bogged down in details but some stories are more interesting than others. Also about to start the Soul of a New Machine, which I've been told is good.

Erik Barnouw's A History of Broadcasting in the United States is such a thorough account of the attempts of regulators to keep up with the advancing technology that it offers a kind of parallel to the modern day that will probably always hold up. 

While I adored the Ultimate History of Videogames when I was 14, I'm not sure it would hold up so much now.

studpuppet

Two I always recommend:

Backroom Boys tells the story of British ingenuity since WW2. Basically the premise is that we've still got brainy people in the UK, it's just that the areas they excel in have changed - eg the chapters on Elite and your mobile phone call switching from mast to mast as you travel.

Command And Control is the history of the management of nuclear weapons intertwined with the 'what happened next' thriller-style story of one particular accident in a US missile silo in 1980. A good read especially as the fear of nuclear armageddon is back, back, BACK!


surreal

The Cuckoo's Egg is fantastic if you like "older" tech - this predates the internet as we know it now and follow the completely true story of Cliff Stoll trying to find a hacker from just minor clues.  There is a great scene where he has to set up a room full of printers just to be able to log and follow what the target has been up to.  Cracking stuff if you even vaguely remember that era.

Z

Quote from: surreal on April 22, 2018, 08:50:31 AM
Cracking stuff if you even vaguely remember that era.
...how about if you dont?

It sounds really interesting but I'm a bit wary of a mainstream book from 1989 about computers obsessively explaining things like what a bit is.


Z

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 22, 2018, 12:42:26 PM

I'm unsure if this is a joke post or not. It actually sounds pretty cool, so I can see it being on my "to read" list until my death.

surreal

Quote from: Z on April 22, 2018, 12:22:04 PM
...how about if you dont?

It sounds really interesting but I'm a bit wary of a mainstream book from 1989 about computers obsessively explaining things like what a bit is.

No, nothing like that. It's a cat-and-mouse thriller really - the guy tracked a hacker down from one misplaced payment on an automated system.  The thing that worked for me is actually the way he had to use whatever he could cobble together to be able to track things, it's tricky to explain really.  The lower tech works to the story's advantage, but it works better if you can empathise I guess?  there is no explaining what bits and bytes are etc, but also no world wide web, no cell phones, needing to use fifty separate phone lines, it's modems and printers and old VDU screens.

The Wikipedia page is quite good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg