Scientist from MIT

Good non-fiction is very, very cool. And at MIT they can do it, and judging by the number of books, they love it. For Habr, I chose books with a professional bias, and here is what is interesting to read in the first place. So, under the cut 14 books on the history of IT, media and many more wonderful things in English.

Who cares, the whole catalog here .

Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, Crispin Rope. ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer

Conceived in 1943, launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1955, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first universal programmable electronic computer. But he was not just a milestone on the way to a modern computer. Over the decade of work, ENIAC calculated firing tables, simulated physical effects in thermonuclear explosions, conducted the first successful numerical weather forecast. This book reveals the whole story: from the design, construction, testing and use of ENIAC to references in IT-folklore. It emphasizes the complex relationship of ENIAC and its creators with revolutionary approaches to computer architecture and coding, first documented by John von Neumann in 1945.

The authors explore the forgotten period of 1947-1948, when ENIAC was reconfigured to simulate atomic decay - the first modern computer program. ENIAC in the book is examined from different points of view: as a war machine, as a “first computer”, as a tool constantly reworked by its users, and as an object of contradictory historical stories. They combine the history of ENIAC and its programs, describing men and women: mathematicians, scientists and engineers - who invented, designed, programmed and managed it.

Marie Hicks. Discount Women Computing Technique

In 1944, Britain was a leader in the field of electronic computing, but by 1974 its computer industry was almost extinct. What happened during these thirty years should be a lesson for all post-industrial superpowers. At that time, Britain struggled to use technology to preserve its global power, and the inability to manage skilled labor became an obstacle to the information age.

Maria Hicks explores the history of labor feminization and gender technocracy, which negated Britain’s efforts to computerize. This failure is due to the systematic disregard of the government by most of the trained professionals simply because they were women. They were the hidden reason for the growth of high technologies from the Second World War to the 1960s. But already in the years 1960-1970, a gender revolution occurs, personnel problems develop into structural and gender discrimination, leading to the largest consumers of computers: the civil service and the expanding private sector making decisions that lead to disastrous consequences for the computer industry and the nation as a whole. .

Based on declassified government data, archives of large British computer companies, personal interviews, the author reveals the myth of technological meritocracy and explains why even today the possession of technical skills does not guarantee women success in science and technology. This book shows how the crowding out of women from jobs had serious macroeconomic implications for the UK and why the United States risks repeating this mistake in the 21st century.

Carol A. Stabile. The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist

At the beginning of the Cold War, under the pretext of fighting communist influence, a blacklist of unwanted people appeared in the American media. In fact, all of them: poetess Dorothy Parker , jazz vocalist Lina Horne , the burlesque queen Rosa Lee and many others - with their behavior and ambitions threatened the image of a woman in a good American family.

This book describes what radio and television have lost with them: it tells about the attempts of dismissed women to portray America as a diverse, complex, and open country. The author describes media inlays under the authority of patriarchal and racist views and reflects on how television could have been formed without such pressure. This book is an urgent reminder of those myths that are formed in the absence of freedom in the media space.

Jaroslav Švelch. The Gaming of the Iron Curtain: Howswomen and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia

In addition to the history of Tetris, the development of video games in the countries of the social camp is practically nowhere described. Despite the lack of home computers, the lack of free sale of computer parts and software in the 1980s, there was an active DIY community in Czechoslovakia that created more than two hundred games that were at the same time creative, inventive and politically provocative. For the first time, Jaroslav Schwechl opens the social history of video games and game design in Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries.

He describes how Czechoslovak enthusiasts used video games as a creative medium not only for entertainment, but also for self-expression. Working in state-owned computer clubs, they created games that, unlike television or the press, were not regulated or censored. In the recent years of the communist regime, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to create games about current political events, anticipating trends that will become relevant in many years. Based on extensive interviews, political, economic and social history, this book tells about the fantastic history of the game with the system, introducing us to people who, through their engineering skills, displayed creative aspirations and political views.

Julian Togelius. Playing Smart. On Games, Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.

Is it possible to evaluate intelligence through games? How will AI change games in the future? The author explores the relationship between games and intelligence in order to offer a new vision of game design.
We already use games for testing AI algorithms, testing our own thinking and a better understanding of both natural and artificial intelligence. In the future, developers will use improved AI and create advanced games that, in turn, will make us smarter. And the author tells us how.

Games are the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence. In 1948, Alan Turing wrote a program to play chess, today there is already IBM Deep Blue, AlphaGo DeepMind, huge funds are spent on developing AI, which can play arcade games like Pac-Man. Programmers continue to use games for testing and developing AI, challenging human cognitive abilities.

Game design is a cognitive science: when we play or develop a game, we plan, we think spatially, we build forecasts, we evaluate ourselves and our work. By studying these processes, we can better understand how people and cars think. AI can do more to develop a game than a mental picture of a skilled opponent. We can use it to create game bots and development tools that will create a new generation of games.

Arlindo Oliveira. The Digital Mind: How Science Is Redefining Humanity

What do computers, cells and the brain have in common? Computers are electronic devices developed by humans; cells are biological objects created by evolution; the brain is the container and the source of our consciousness. But all this, one way or another, information processing devices. The strength of the human brain is still not comparable with any existing machine or a famous living thing. Over the millennia of brain evolution, we have developed tools and technologies that facilitate our lives. This book describes how advances in science and technology will allow us to create digital consciousness.

Exponential growth is one of the patterns by which life evolves, but technological changes now promise to outrun even evolutionary ones. The author describes technological and scientific advances from the laws of propagation of an electromagnetic field to the direct creation of computers. He calls natural selection the final algorithm, discusses the genetics and evolution of the central nervous system, describes the role of computer visualization in understanding and modeling the brain. Having considered the behavior of the unique system that creates the mind, he addresses the question: is the human brain the only system that can have consciousness? If digital consciousness emerges, what are the social, legal, and ethical implications? Will digital minds be our partners or rivals?

Rachel Plotnick. Power Button: Panic, and The Politics of Pushing

Press the button and turn on the TV; turn the key and go; Click and “like”. Touching a finger launches a device, car, or action script, even if the user does not understand the basic principles and algorithms. How do buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, hate and fear them? The author tracks the origin of today's "button" society, explores how the buttons were created, distributed, used were rejected and altered throughout history.

The book explored the period between 1880 and 1925, when the development of "technology management hands": a typewriter, telegraph and fingerprinting. The author describes how pressing a button became a means of a digital command that promised easy, imperceptible control with protection against a fool. Emphasizing the double digital nature of pressing a button: as a finger action and binary activity (on / off, up / down) - the author assumes that the principles of the pre-computer era pre-empt the user interface on modern devices.

The book describes the use of early buttons to call servants and the growing tension between those who worked with their hands and those who commanded the fingers. The buttons, the author says, remain relevant until now, despite not all the efforts of Apple to make them inconvenient, unreliable and even dangerous.

Alex Rosenberg. How It Gets Things Wrong: Neuroscience

To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? No, says Alex Rosenberg in this book. Think you understand the subject well after reading a popular historical bestseller? No, because the historical narrative is always lying. This is not just an inaccuracy or one-sidedness, but the same confusion as the geocentric model of the world. We no longer believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, why do we still believe the narrative? Neuroscience shows that human evolution has turned the tool necessary for survival into an erroneous theory of the human world. When historians use narration, Rosenberg continues, they are not only wrong, but also harmful. For example, in Israel and Palestine there are opposing historical narratives that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger with disastrous results applied the lessons of the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy.

Human evolution improved the consciousness of primates: it gave the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey or friends - that allowed a person to reach the top of the African food chain. Now this tough ability makes us think that we can understand the story: what Kaiser thought in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States, through the narration of past events and their causes. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will understand the story only if we stop trying to “tell” it.

Philipp Schönthaler. Portrait Of The Manager As A Young Author On Storytelling, Business, and Literature.

Big corporations love good stories. Microsoft has a staff of twenty-five corporate writers, and IBM, Coca-Cola, and the World Bank have the same teams. This was famous for Steve Jobs. Today, storytelling is a special form of communication for organizations. Philip Schontaler explains this amazing friendship between business and literature.

Contradictions are obvious. If stories take up free time, managers have almost none. And yet, narration is useful when handling complex things. When information flows too fast for us, the narrative provides communicative effectiveness. What happens if the narrative becomes omnipresent? Does the commercialization of stories affect the literature? Shannaler explores the relationship of economics and literature, describes their common form of writing. Most text books in the corporate world are written by business writers, and this book offers the view of a literary author who examines the influence of literature on business on each other.

Brian hayes Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations

Brian Hayes convinces us that mathematics is too important and too interesting to remain solely in the hands of mathematicians. This book is an interesting and accessible study of the world of mathematics, which opens up topics from sudoku to Markov chains to readers. Heys argues that mathematics is not only an important tool for understanding the world, but also a whole world filled with delightful objects and patterns. In a series of essays, Hayes sets out to explore this exotic landscape and takes the reader along.

In mathematics, the reputation of a boring, difficult and detached from the life of the subject. But Hayes makes her fascinating. Whether he tells the story of a joke about a mathematical prodigy, reflects on an abandoned ball in n-dimensional space, or explains pseudo-random numbers, Heys shares his enthusiasm. He gives a cinematic interpretation of the discovery of the Riemann zeta function, explains the Sudoku mathematics and describes more-than-average averages.

Martin Erwig. Once Upon An Algorithm: How Stories Explain Computing

In this book, Martin Ervig explains computing as something outside of computers, and computer science as the study of a system for solving problems with which our everyday activities are connected. For example, in the morning you get up, take a shower, dress, have breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem with a series of well-defined steps — an algorithm.

Ervig illustrates a series of computer science concepts with examples from everyday life and familiar stories. For example, Hansel and Gretel perform a way out of the forest, the film Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of undecidability, Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures, the magic in Harry Potter’s world is understood through types and abstractions, and Indiana Jones demonstrates the difficulty of searching. In parallel, Ervig also discusses views and various ways of organizing data, cycles and the problem of stopping, various forms of recursion, and rules for finding errors in algorithms.
This fascinating book easily explains computer science and shows its relevance to everyday life. What you can think about next time you start the algorithm for getting up in the morning.

Ryan M. Milner. The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media

Memes are the lingua franca of modern media space. They are created, distributed and transformed by many Internet users. Ryan Milner argues that memes and the mathematical process form a social dialogue. It is hard to imagine a major cultural or political event that does not create a constellation of memes. Math media, Milner writes, allows you to participate in updating memes, as they balance with familiar and unfamiliar information, interweaving new and old ideas. The next comment is created by indirect conversion and transformation of the original ideas. Thanks to the mathematics, small changes have a wide reach.

Milner examines the formal and social influence of the math media and describes the five main mechanisms through which they work: multimodality , redefinition, resonance, collectivism and distribution. He explores how memetic media simultaneously expands and limits the possibilities of public dialogue, revealing its potential in public spaces, despite daily controversies. Milner argues that memetic media allows everyone to express their own views even in the face of persistent inequality. This new way of social interaction complicates traditional culture. When old methods of control are intertwined with new ways of exchanging information, the relationship between collective participation and individual expression becomes ambiguous.
For better or for worse, and Milner gives both examples, the math media changes social dialogue.

Felice C. Frankel. Picturing Science and Engineering

One of the most effective ways to document and report your scientific work is photography. Unfortunately, most scientists do not train at all in this craft. In this book, the famous science photographer Felicia Frankel offers a guide to creating images that will be accurate and attractive.

The book gives detailed instructions for creating scientific photos using professional cameras, conventional scanners and phone cameras. It includes a series of step-by-step examples of how to get images suitable for a cover or other types of visualization. Frankel explains to readers how to combine their work with graphics, how to tell a visual story, and discusses the problems of changing and improving images. She describes how finding the right visual expression not only helps make science accessible, but also makes it more informative, helping scientists explain their ideas.

Susanna Paasonen. Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play

We all know that sex is driven by a desire for pleasure, that sexual preferences change throughout life, and game experiments play a key role in how people understand their sexual tastes. However, little attention is paid to understanding the connection between sex and play, sexuality and playfulness. Through these concepts Paasonen shed light on the need for sexual pleasure, the attractiveness of sex and the variability of sexual desires, their relationship with the categories of identity. Based on a large number of studies of sexuality, games and media, Paasonen moves from general to specific, analyzes manuals for adults, the vulgar aesthetics of the Fifty Shades series, ageplay in popular media, BDSM documentaries.

Paasonen argues that the game in the field of sexuality includes experiments with sensations and actions, the study of bodily capabilities, desires, orientations and relationships. Sometimes intense, dark, and even painful in its manifestations and sensory intensity, sex expands the boundaries of imaginary possibilities, and the game triggers sexual identification.