This engaging work provides a concise introduction to the exciting world of computing, encompassing the theory, technology, history, and societal impact of computer software and computing devices. Spanning topics from global conflict to home gaming, international business, and human communication, this text reviews the key concepts unpinning the technology which has shaped the modern world. Topics and features: introduces the foundations of computing, the fundamentals of algorithms, and the essential concepts from mathematics and logic used in computer science; presents a concise history of computing, discussing the historical figures who made important contributions, and the machines which formed major milestones; examines the fields of human−computer interaction, and software engineering; provides accessible introductions to the core aspects of programming languages, operating systems, and databases; describes the Internet revolution, the invention of the smartphone, and the rise of social media, as well as the Internet of Things and cryptocurrencies; explores legal and ethical aspects of computing, including issues of hacking and cybercrime, and the nature of online privacy, free speech and censorship; discusses such innovations as distributed systems, service-oriented architecture, software as a service, cloud computing, and embedded systems; includes key learning topics and review questions in every chapter, and a helpful glossary. Offering an enjoyable overview of the fascinating and broad-ranging field of computing, this easy-to-understand primer introduces the general reader to the ideas on which the digital world was built, and the historical developments that helped to form the modern age.

As the amount of accumulated data across a variety of fields becomes harder to maintain, it is essential for a new generation of computational theories and tools to assist humans in extracting knowledge from this rapidly growing digital data. Global Trends in Intelligent Computing Research and Development brings together recent advances and in depth knowledge in the fields of knowledge representation and computational intelligence. Highlighting the theoretical advances and their applications to real life problems, this book is an essential tool for researchers, lecturers, professors, students, and developers who have seek insight into knowledge representation and real life applications.

A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.

The Closed World offers a radically new alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Arguing that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons, Paul Edwards shows how Cold War social and cultural contexts shaped emerging computer technology--and were transformed, in turn, by information machines. The Closed World explores three apparently disparate histories--the history of American global power, the history of computing machines, and the history of subjectivity in science and culture--through the lens of the American political imagination. In the process, it reveals intimate links between the military projects of the Cold War, the evolution of digital computers, and the origins of cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence. Edwards begins by describing the emergence of a "closed-world discourse" of global surveillance and control through high-technology military power. The Cold War political goal of "containment" led to the SAGE continental air defense system, Rand Corporation studies of nuclear strategy, and the advanced technologies of the Vietnam War. These and other centralized, computerized military command and control projects--for containing world-scale conflicts--helped closed-world discourse dominate Cold War political decisions. Their apotheosis was the Reagan-era plan for a " Star Wars" space-based ballistic missile defense. Edwards then shows how these military projects helped computers become axial metaphors in psychological theory. Analyzing the Macy Conferences on cybernetics, the Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, and the early history of artificial intelligence, he describes the formation of a "cyborg discourse." By constructing both human minds and artificial intelligences as information machines, cyborg discourse assisted in integrating people into the hyper-complex technological systems of the closed world. Finally, Edwards explores the cyborg as political identity in science fiction--from the disembodied, panoptic AI of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the mechanical robots of Star Wars and the engineered biological androids of Blade Runner--where Information Age culture and subjectivity were both reflected and constructed. Inside Technology series

Unter "Grid Computing" versteht man die gleichzeitige Nutzung vieler Computer in einem Netzwerk für die Lösung eines einzelnen Problems. Grundsätzliche Aspekte und anwendungsbezogene Details zu diesem Gebiet finden Sie in diesem Band. - Grid Computing ist ein viel versprechender Trend, denn man kann damit (1) vorhandene Computer-Ressourcen kosteneffizient nutzen, (2) Probleme lösen, für die enorme Rechenleistungen erforderlich sind, und (3) Synergieeffekte erzielen, auch im globalen Maßstab - Ansatz ist in Forschung und Industrie (IBM, Sun, HP und andere) zunehmend populär (aktuelles Beispiel: Genomforschung) - Buch deckt Motivationen zur Einführung von Grids ebenso ab wie technologische Grundlagen und ausgewählte Beispiele für moderne Anwendungen

Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing: Best Global Practices offers a global overview of high-performance computing (HPC) for industrial applications, along with a discussion of software challenges, business models, access models (e.g., cloud computing), public-private partnerships, simulation and modeling, visualization, big data a

Alan Turing (1912–1954) made seminal contributions to mathematical logic, computation, computer science, artificial intelligence, cryptography and theoretical biology. In this volume, outstanding scientific thinkers take a fresh look at the great range of Turing's contributions, on how the subjects have developed since his time, and how they might develop still further. The contributors include Martin Davis, J. M. E. Hyland, Andrew R. Booker, Ueli Maurer, Kanti V. Mardia, S. Barry Cooper, Stephen Wolfram, Christof Teuscher, Douglas Richard Hofstadter, Philip K. Maini, Thomas E. Woolley, Eamonn A. Gaffney, Ruth E. Baker, Richard Gordon, Stuart Kauffman, Scott Aaronson, Solomon Feferman, P. D. Welch and Roger Penrose. These specially commissioned essays will provoke and engross the reader who wishes to understand better the lasting significance of one of the twentieth century's deepest thinkers.

In The World Computer Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commodification generates information itself. Out of the omnipresent calculus imposed by commodification, information emerges historically as a new money form. Investigating its subsequent financialization of daily life and colonization of semiotics, Beller situates the development of myriad systems for quantifying the value of people, objects, and affects as endemic to racial capitalism and computation. Built on oppression and genocide, capital and its technical result as computation manifest as racial formations, as do the machines and software of social mediation that feed racial capitalism and run on social difference. Algorithms, derived from for-profit management strategies, conscript all forms of expression—language, image, music, communication—into the calculus of capital such that even protest may turn a profit. Computational media function for the purpose of extraction rather than ameliorating global crises, and financialize every expressive act, converting each utterance into a wager. Repairing this ecology of exploitation, Beller contends, requires decolonizing information and money, and the scripting of futures wagered by the cultural legacies and claims of those in struggle.

Global Networks takes up the host of issues raised by the new networking technology that now links individuals, groups, and organizations in different countries and on different continents. The 21 contributions focus on the implementation, applications and impact of computer-mediated communication in a global context.

This compact history traces the computer industry from its origins in 1950s mainframes, through the establishment of standards beginning in 1965 and the introduction of personal computing in the 1980s. It concludes with the Internet’s explosive growth since 1995. Across these four periods, Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel Garcia-Swartz describe the steady trend toward miniaturization and explain its consequences for the bundles of interacting components that make up a computer system. With miniaturization, the price of computation fell and entry into the industry became less costly. Companies supplying different components learned to cooperate even as they competed with other businesses for market share. Simultaneously with miniaturization—and equally consequential—the core of the computer industry shifted from hardware to software and services. Companies that failed to adapt to this trend were left behind. Governments did not turn a blind eye to the activities of entrepreneurs. The U.S. government was the major customer for computers in the early years. Several European governments subsidized private corporations, and Japan fostered R&D in private firms while protecting its domestic market from foreign competition. From Mainframes to Smartphones is international in scope and broad in its purview of this revolutionary industry.