Computers: The Book

it's been a long time, i shouldn't have left you without a dope post to read through?...sorry

I finally got my Swedin/Ferro Computers book and it was a nice factual layout of computers past and present. While Neil Armstrong was moonwalking aimlessly in '69, ARPANET gives birth to the marvelous internet.

It was still a bit too dry for my tastes. As the introduction says, it "provides an accessible historical overview of this ever-changing technopoly..." (ix), so I knew to expect before I started the first chapter.

I would have to say the format of book is a reflection of Moore's Law, whereas it starts off primitive and then gets exponentially more interesting towards the 2nd half of it as technology improves faster and faster.

"Intel saw the advantages of the personal computer market and continued to push the microprocessor along the path of Moore's Law." (p. 102). This explains my point how it took almost 2/3 of the book to speak on the more modern technology that we relate to today. It's not that the book isn't interesting but more towards the point that for a book that came out in 2005, it seems a bit outdated. If you take a step back from the wealth of information and knowledge the book overfeeds you, computers are just a byproduct of Moore's Law. Technology and the constant need to improve it will not likely stop until all the over-exaggerated movies about the end of the world actually start to make sense if we still have enough of our attention spans to care.

Overall, I thought, while the book was a little dry, it got me to think outside the structure it presented itself in. Although it was inevitable, I was glad the authors acknowledged Moore's Law. The book has a point which is made through this idea of rapid technological change. Computers may be obsolete within a few years which I  believe was one of the major themes and I couldn't agree more.