Tag Archives: Computing

Review: Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law
by
Arnold Thackray, David Brock, and Rachel Jones

Title: Moore’s Law
Author: Arnold Thackray, David Brock, and Rachel Jones
Published: 2015
ISBN-13: 9780465055647
Publisher: Basic Books
Publisher’s Blurb[The silicon transistors’] incredible proliferation has altered the course of human history as dramatically as any political or social revolution. At the heart of it all has been one quiet Californian: Gordon Moore.
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture

“Gordon was the opposite of a gregarious, people-pleasing middle-child:  instead, he was a boy with exceptional concentration and focus, oriented not toward words and emotional engagement, but toward practical results – with or without companions.”  (p. 44)

Full disclosure:  I usually make it a policy not to review books of people I know.  David Brock is a co-worker, and friend, which should instantly be grounds from even considering writing a review.  However, Gordon Moore has had such a tremendous impact on the computer industry, it seems unfair not to. His contributions need to be known, and Moore’s Law does a very good job of making them known, and understandable.

Further, I have been dilly-dallying over this review because Moore’s Law covers so much interesting history I’m not sure I can do right by it.

Not only is it the history of Moore, whose family arrived in California in 1847.  It’s also the history of computing, computers, and Silicon Valley.

Every decision in Gordon Moore’s life was based on the words “measure, analyze, decide.”  He kept notebooks detailing nearly everything; finances, business models, chemical analysis, semiconductor design, everything.   In this measurement and analysis, he figured out what came to be known as “Moore’s Law,” making computers faster and more powerful.  It’s led to things like the computer in our pockets we call smart phones.

That’s just part of a fascinating life inextricably connected to what’s become Silicon Valley.  There’s so much more in Moore’s Law about the lives of those pioneers and revolutionaries whose passion for chemistry, engineering, and physics brought about the devices which connect the universe in creative ways Galileo could only dream of.  Gordon Moore led the charge, quietly.  Not because he wanted to change the world, but because he was fascinated and saw ways to make money off the now ubiquitous micro-chip.

Thackray, Brock and Jones make the story of this complex man highly readable.  For those curious about the roots of modern computing, its effect on our lives, and the biography of the quiet revolutionary who led computers to this point, readers should read Moore’s Law and add it to their library.

Review: Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

Title: Where Wizards Stay Up Late
Author: Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon
Twitter: @KatieHafner
Published: 1996
ISBN-13: 9780684832678
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publisher’s Blurb: Twenty five years ago, it didn’t exist.
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture

DARPA had set out to link the core processing capabilities in America’s top computer science research centers … (p. 232)

The romance of the Net came not from how it was built or how it worked but from how it was used.  (p. 218)

You know I’m old when I say there was a time in my life when I didn’t know what a computer really was, and I’d never heard of the internet or the World Wide Web.  Really.  Phones were attached to walls then too.

In 1984 I moved from Texas to Silicon Valley with my then boyfriend who had a newly minted degree in Computer Science and a job at a company which made disc duplicators.

I had no idea what I was in for.  The Selectric III was the height of fashion for secretaries at the time, and I loved mine.   But because I lived with a geek, the culture seeped in.  We had multiple phone lines, various computers and modems, and … well, the rest is history, so to speak.

As I write this, I work at the Computer History Museum and am surrounded by the internet.  It’s the best place I’ve ever worked.

Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s book Where Wizards Stay Up Late takes the reader through the history of the Internet.  From the wild and wooly days of ARPA, whose IPTO  was charged with developing a way for academic computers to link together allowing for sharing of information over AT&T’s phone line.

The birth of what became the internet was four enormous computers in Santa Barbara, Menlo Park, CA, Boston, and Salt Lake City, Utah.  And what an effort it took to figure out how to do that.  No one knew what they were doing, it had to be developed from scratch.

While Hafner & Lyon lay out the history, this book is not highly readable for someone who isn’t either a history nut (me) or a computer geek (partly me).  It gets technical, which is fascinating if you’re someone whose been around the lingo for almost 30 years (also me).  It reads a lot like a text book.

One of the oddities was the condescending manner in which things like “kludge” were explained, but more technical terms and phrases were often unexplained.  It was like reading a book for adults, and then finding something directed at children randomly inserted.

I like my reading to be aimed at intelligent adults, not someone who hasn’t learned to tie their shoes yet.

The end felt rushed, as though the authors realized they were running out of time and needed to pick up the pace.  As with all things computer history related, there’s a complex story to tell.  In trying to simplify the story enough to tell in one short book, Hafner and Lyon shortchanged their readers.

In other words, it’s an okay book.  But just okay.

New to the Stacks: Many Books

Artemis by Andy Weir
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
Sand by Hugh Howey
It Began With Babbage by Subrata Dasgupta
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
  • Artemis by Andy Weir – read
  • It Began with Babbage  by Subrata Dasgupta- DNF
  • Sand by Hugh Howey ~ read
  • Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon ~ read
  • The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

Review: The Imagineers of War

Imagineers of War
by
Sharon Weinberger

Title: The Imagineers of War
Author: Sharon Weinberger
Published: 2017
ISBN-13: 9780385351799
Publisher: Knopf
Publisher’s Blurb
What’s Auntie Reading Now? picture
Signature page

[The space race] was always a race, but one in which the United States assumed it had a natural advantage.  The Soviet Union could not produce a decent automobile; how could it possibly hope to best the United States in rocket science?  (p. 31)

Since finishing Sharon Weinberger’s superbly researched book, The Imagineers of War, I find myself coming up short in how to describe it, much less review it.  When talking to friends about it, all I can say is, “Those people are crazy!”

ARPA was founded in 1958 with a mission of creating “the unimagined weapons of the future.”  Originally meant to beat the Soviets into space, ARPA had an unlimited budget, prestige in the Pentagon, and became a magnet for every wacky idea to come along.

The space race went to NASA, formed a year later, and weaponry became DARPA’s focus.  Nearly anyone with an idea could get through the doors to make a pitch.

One of my favorites is Ronald Reagan’s version of Star Wars, a network of missiles in space meant to stop incoming bombs.  Only, Reagan was never supposed to hear about it or take it seriously.  To say Star Wars was flawed in concept would be an understatement of massive proportions.  A lot of DARPA’s ideas made me wince and wonder how anyone thought that was a good idea.

Another interesting one was making a sort of mechanical elephant tall enough to carry supplies and personnel through the Vietnamese jungles.  It never got off the drawing boards.  That it got on the drawing boards leaves me in awe.

And then there are the little details that give me an unfair advantage on trivia nights.  That is, if trivia nights focused on weird historic stories.  In this case, it’s the story of how Agent Orange, the defoliant used to burn the jungles – and everything else – in Vietnam down.  The dangerous effects of this herbicide reverberate even now, over 50 years since its use was implemented.

The men at DARPA were so bent on stopping Communism in its tracks and making it easier for US troops to fight, they lost sight of the costs in terms of civilians in surrounding villages, and their food supplies.  A variety of chemical experiments were made all code-named Agent [some color].  They worked their way through the alphabet until Agent Orange proved to be the one that worked.

There were the experiments with psychic abilities and ways to weaponize them.  I couldn’t help thinking of the 2009 George Clooney movie, Men Who Stare at Goats

Outlandish ideas aside, this is the agency that gave us drones and the Internet.  But Imagineers of War is more than a recitation of outlandish ideas, it delves into the politics of various administrations, the Pentagon, NASA, the armed forces and this not so little mysterious agency doing things no one, not even DARPA, completely understood.

The men and, much later, women of DARPA have a vague mission.  To think up and develop weapons of the future to find the enemy and kill it.  It’s easy to understand the inter-agency contests that have arisen since the very beginning.

Weinberger puts this all into context.  The outlandish ideas, the political infighting, the successes and failures, set against the backdrop of impending disaster, imagined and otherwise.  She sets the context of the times with care.  From the Space Race to the Cold War to Vietnam and beyond, Sharon Weinberger tells us why DARPA was created and why even the most outlandish ideas were taken seriously.

Yes, these people were crazy.  But they’re the ones charged with visualizing how to keep us safe from a world that’s crazy.  They may be crackpots, but they’re our crackpots doing their best to imagine a crazy future.

New to the Stacks: Programmed Inequality

Programmed Inequality
by Marie Hicks

Marie Hicks wrote Programmed Inequality about sexism in computing in England which led to the downfall of the UK’s computer industry. She signed it “Thanks for supporting the humanities,” because, like me, she believes Humanities is integral to a well-rounded life.

New to the Stacks: Reza Aslan and Leslie Berlin

No God but God by Reza Aslan
The Man Behind the Microchip by Leslie Berlin

I’ve read Aslan’s Zealot twice now and decided it was time to read some of his other work.  No god but God by Reza Aslan

The Man Behind the Microchip by Leslie Berlin

What’s Auntie Reading Now? Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper
by Kurt Beyer

Did Not Finish (DNF)

This isn’t about Grace Hopper, it’s about the evolution of software. It’s dry and gets technical. The clue to it not being about Grace came about a hundred pages from the end, when the author drops the bombshell that Grace was an alcoholic and wound up in the hospital because she tried to commit suicide. Nothing in the pages before gave even a clue what was happening to Grace that might lead to such an event. No more slogging for me! I’ll find another book on Grace to read. One that’s more biographical in nature.

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