In the Beginning...Was the Command Line

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Paul Graham

This seems to be a duplicate entry of https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2973119W/Hackers_painters

Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

Ellen Ullman · 189 pages

Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where "weird logic dreamers" like herself live "close to the machine." Still, she is kee

The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future

Robert Darnton · 218 pages

"In The Case for Books, Robert Darnton offers an in-depth examination of the book from its earliest beginnings to its shifting role today in popular culture, commerce, and the academy. In a lasting collection drawn from previously published and new work alike, Robert Darnton lends unique authority to the life and role of the book in society. The resulting book is a wise work of scholarship - one t

You Are Not a Gadget

Jaron Lanier · 224 pages

A computer-age visionary argues that the Internet has failed to live up to its early promises, sharing cautionary perspectives on the Web 2.0 design concept while optimistically evaluating the Internet as a positive cultural vehicle.

How to Be Alone

Jonathan Franzen · 306 pages

Collection of some of Franzen's essays, including the one known as "the Harper's essay". Some are edited or tweaked from their original printings. A mixture of topics but well-written and enjoyable; Franzen is as thoughtful as ever.

Distrust That Particular Flavor

William Gibson · 272 pages

Known primarily as a novelist, Gibson has, over thirty years, been approached by different publication to share his insights into contemporary culture. The resulting essays are collected here for the first time.

The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays

Martin Heidegger · 182 pages

I Know You Got Soul: Machines With That Certain Something

Jeremy Clarkson · 256 pages

It will come as no surprise to anyone that Jeremy Clarkson loves machines. But it's not just any old bucket of bolts, cogs and bearings that puts that rings his bell. In fact, he's scoured the length and and breadth of the land, plunged into oceans and taken to the skies in search of those rare machines with that elusive certain something.And along the way he's discovered:The safest place to be in

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 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

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

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

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

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

Nicholas Carr · 276 pages

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

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

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

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.

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe · 312 pages

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a

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

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

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.

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