The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson · 560 pages

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 di

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Steven Levy · 424 pages

Written with full cooperation from top management, including cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this is the inside story behind Google, the most successful and most admired technology company of our time, told by one of our best technology writers. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indi

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

John Battelle · 323 pages

How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture• The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller• Finalist for the Goldman Sachs/FT Business Book of the Year AwardWhat does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question—in all its shades of meaning—can unlock the most intractable riddles of business and arguably of human cul

Next: The Future Just Happened

Michael Lewis · 248 pages

In Liar's Poker the barbarians seized control of the bond markets. In The New New Thing some guys from Silicon Valley redefined the American economy. Now, with his knowing eye and wicked pen, Michael Lewis reveals how much the Internet boom has encouraged great changes in the way we live, work, and think. He finds that we are in the midst of one of the greatest status revolutions in the history of

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy

Robert Scoble, Shel Israel · 248 pages

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

James Gleick · 526 pages

From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Tur

Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet

Andrew Blum · 304 pages

A travel book exploring the physical places and connections of the infrastructure of the Internet. Along the way, he explores data warehouses, meets some of the historical figures in the creation of the Internet and the people who keep everything humming along so we can get on with our virtual lives.

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

Joichi Ito, Jeff Howe · 327 pages

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon · 304 pages

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R.

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

Bruce Sterling · 314 pages

The Victorian Internet

Tom Standage · 227 pages

The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. From the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet, whose experiments proved that electricity could be transmitted over great distances, to Samuel F. B. Morse, who developed the first practical electric telegraph in 1837, to Tho

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World

Christopher Steiner · 252 pages

The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills--and maybe an advanced degree or two. These d

Being Digital

Nicholas Negroponte · 249 pages

In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. ... If you suffer from digital anxiety ... here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

Steven Johnson · 293 pages

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepr

Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software

Sam Williams · 225 pages

"Why would Microsoft executives lie awake at night worrying about the antics of a long-haired, renegade hacker named Richard Stallman? Why do some of the smartest programmers on the planet revere this man as "St. Ignucius"? And how did a stubborn, precocious boy obsessed with creating the perfect model rocket grow up to play David to the software industry's Goliath?". "Free as in Freedom traces t

In the Beginning...Was the Command Line

Neal Stephenson · 155 pages

This is "the Word" -- one man's word, certainly -- about the art (and artifice) of the state of our computer-centric existence. And considering that the "one man" is Neal Stephenson, "the hacker Hemingway" (Newsweek) -- acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd-friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc.) -- the w

Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee · 251 pages

"Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has been hailed by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of this century. His creation has already changed the way people do business, entertain themselves, exchange ideas, and socialize with one another."--BOOK JACKET. "Berners-Lee offers insights to help readers understand the true nature of the Web, enabling them to use it to their

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Yuval Noah Harari · 544 pages

From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing head

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone

Brian Merchant · 416 pages

The secret history of the invention that changed everything - and became the most profitable product in the world. Odds are that as you read this, an iPhone is within reach. But before Steve Jobs introduced us to "the one device," as he called it, a cell phone was merely what you used to make calls on the go. How did the iPhone transform our world and turn Apple into the most valuable company e

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

P.W. Singer · 516 pages

A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itselfP. W. Singer's previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers— predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revol

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything

Matthew L. Ball · 352 pages

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Clay Shirky · 334 pages

An examination of how the rapid spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects--for good and for ill. Our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Brad Stone · 384 pages

This book is the definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disrup

The Industries of the Future

Alec J. Ross · 304 pages

"Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what's next for the world, mapping out the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next ten years--for businesses, governments, and the global community--and how we can navigate them. While Alec Ross was working as Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor on Innovation, he traveled to forty-one countries. He visited some of the toughest places in