Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2023 - Technology (History)
- Mahogany S.
- Monday, January 23, 2023
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge prompt "read a fiction or nonfiction book about technology".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
American Inventions
A Chronicle of Achievements That Changed the World.
Published in 1995
Contains 26 articles from American Heritage of Invention & Technology magazine dealing with great American inventions and the inventors responsible.
Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries
All the Milestones in Ingenuity--from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven
Published in 2004
Turing's Cathedral
The Origins of the Digital Universe
Published in 2012
"Legendary historian and philosopher of science George Dyson vividly re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution--in other words, computer code. In the 1940s and '50s, a group of eccentric geniuses--led by John von Neumann--gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their joint project was the realization of thetheoretical universal machine, an idea that had been put forth by mathematician Alan Turing. This group of brilliant engineers worked in isolation, almost entirely independent from industry and the traditional academic community. But because they relied exclusively on government funding, the government wanted its share of the results: the computer that they built also led directly to the hydrogen bomb. George Dyson has uncovered a wealth of new material about this project, and in bringing the story of these men and women and their ideas to life, he shows how the crucial advancements that dominated twentieth-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born"-- Provided by publisher.
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
Published in 2015
A narrative history of humanity's creation and evolution explores how biology and history have defined understandings of what it means to be human, detailing the role of modern cognition in shaping the ecosystem, civilizations and more.
The Innovators
How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Published in 2014
The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is also a history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It's also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen.-- (Source of description not identified)
How We Got to Now
Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
Published in 2014
"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 entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes-from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life. In his trademark style, Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species-to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution; and how clean water made it possible to manufacture computer chips. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe. "-- Provided by publisher.
If then
How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
Published in 2020
"A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller, These Truths. The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their "People Machine" from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy's presidential campaign, the New York Times, Young & Rubicam, and, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense. Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, unearthed from the archives the almost unbelievable story of this long-vanished corporation, and of the women hidden behind it. In the 1950s and 1960s, Lepore argues, Simulmatics invented the future by building the machine in which the world now finds itself trapped and tormented, algorithm by algorithm"-- Provided by publisher.
Science and Technology in World History
An Introduction
Published in 2006
Includes information on agricultural revolution, agriculture, alchemy, Aristotle, astrology, astronomy, Babylonia, Bible, Britain, calendars, China, Christianity, cities, city states, Nicholas Copernicus, education, Egypt, elements, Euclid, France, Galileo Galilei, geocentrism, geometry, Germany, Greece, heliocentricism, Hellenic period, Hellenistic period, hieroglyphs, Hinduism, Hippocrates, Holy Roman Empire, Human Genome Project, Hwang Ho, India, industrial revolution, iron, irrigation, Islam, Italy, mathematics, mechanics, medicine, Mesopotamia, metallurgy, Middle Ages, military revolution, Ming dynasty, Moon, motion, natural philosophy, natural selection, Neolithic era, Netherlands, Isaac Newton, optics, Paris, patronage, Persia, physics, planets, population, Protestantism, Claudius Ptolemy, religion, Renaissance, Rome (ancient), Rome (city), scientific revolution, shipbuilding, slavery, scientific societies, Song dynasties, Soviet Union, Spain, stars, Sun, telescopes, time reckoning, United States, universities, urban revolution, warfare, women in science, World War I, World War II, writing, etc.
The Medium is the Massage
An Inventory of Effects
Published in 1996
30 years after its publication Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage remains his most entertaining, provocative, and piquant book. With every technological and social "advance" McLuhan's proclamation that "the media work us over completely" becomes more evident and plain. In his words, so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered'. McLuhan's remarkable observation that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication" is undoubtedly more relevant today than ever before. With the rise of the internet and the explosion of the digital revolution there has never been a better time to revisit Marshall McLuhan.
Simply Electrifying
The Technology That Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk
Published in 2017
Looks at the stories of the researchers, innovators, businesspeople, and regulators who shaped how electricity was understood and used, from early researchers like Benjamin Franklin to contemporary innovators like Elon Musk.
A People's History of Silicon Valley
How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy
Published in 2018