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A Brief History of the Future

July 11, 2009 by Roy Johnson

readable account of computer and Internet development

This is a fascinating history of the Internet – but given a personal spin. Journalist and academic John Naughton describes the technology of the digital revolution from a user’s point of view. What are the concerns of the average person? How does it all work? At each stage he explains the significance of each development. This approach will be very reassuring for beginners. A Brief History of the Future starts with potted biographies of Vannevar Bush, Norbert Weiner, and J.C.R Licklider as his version of ‘fathers of the Internet’, but it is Paul Baran and Vint Cerf who he tips as most important of all – because they came up with the ideas which pulled it all together.

A Brief History of the Future Naughton is good as explaining the details of the technology and engineering, and he puts his professional journalism skills to good use. Whenever necessary, he uses analogies with practical, everyday matters – such as packet-switching being like moving a house and its contents in separate trucks which take different routes to their destination, and then are re-assembled at the other end. He also writes amusingly about the pleasures and perils of email, and takes a refreshingly tolerant view on the issues of censorship and control.

There are some parts of the hard technical developments which he leaves out of his account – politely admitting that he has done so. This seems to me a wise choice, because the type of popular readership at which the book is aimed will welcome his focus on the personal achievements and his own enthusiastic account of engineering history.

Some of the other accounts of the Internet such as Hafner and Lyon’s Where Wizards Stay up Late and Robert Cringley’s Accidental Empires occasionally tax the non-specialist reader in this respect.

Like these other books, his narrative becomes chronologically scrambled at times, maybe because this reflects the disparate locations, enterprises, and time schemes [not to mention funding and government enterprises] involved in the enterprise. Naughton goes out of his way to be scrupulously fair to them all – including even monopolies such IT & T – which like British Telecom put a brake on the development of the Internet for a long time.

There is a particularly interesting chapter on the development of the UNIX operating system, and an explanation of how and why the Usenet News system evolved from it. He also provides interesting introductions to topics such the development of Linux and the Open Source movement which belives that software should be available free of charge.

He is at his best when describing the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web – perhaps because the story flows in an unbroken chronological sequence from Vannevar Bush, via Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson, through to Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesson. He ends with a brief glimpse at the current dangers of the commercialisation of the Net and the reasons why it is almost impossible to predict its future.

Naughton offers a very readable, humane, and contagiously enthusiastic account of the Net and its major features. This is a perfect book for anyone who wants to know the background to this major technological revolution.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet, London: Orion Books, 2000, pp.332, ISBN 075381093X


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Filed Under: Techno-history Tagged With: Computers, Cultural history, Technological history, Technology

The Computer and the Information Revolution

June 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the history of mathematics + technology = computers

This is book which gets mentioned in any serious history of computers. It’s a study of the mathematical, mechanical, and then the electronic developments which led to the creation of modern computers. The first part of The Computer and the Information Revolution offers an account of the development of mathematical systems, ending with the creation of binary notation in the nineteenth century. This paves the way for part two, which is a history of automatic calculation – first by mechanical devices, then by electronic means. It’s a book dense with a sense of history, and Ifrah’s span reaches effortlessly from 3500 BCE (Before the Common Era) to the maths underlying computer technology in the post-war years.

The Computer and the Information RevolutionHis approach can sometimes be a little disconcerting. One minute we’re in ancient Greece, next in the eighteenth century. A more smoothly integrated chronological narrative would have strengthened his case, just as more pictures and diagrams would have spared him page-length descriptions of the machines he discusses. This is a book which is crying out for illustrations.

However, he more than makes up for this in his wide-ranging inclusiveness. Even small-scale and failed inventors are mentioned. He is particularly good at explaining the relationship between mathematical theory and what was technologically possible at any given point. He points out that there are big gaps in the development of information technology – very often caused by the absence of nought/null in the numbering system.

It’s an odd book, because the translator and editor fills in what he clearly regards as important gaps in the author’s knowledge, and the chronology is patchy too. There’s a lot of back-tracking to make up for a lack of continuous narrative.

However, his account gains a great deal of impetus as all strands converge for the creation of the first modern computers. His description of Alan Turing’s conceptual breakthrough in 1936 and his relationship to John Van Neumann’s idea for a program stored in memory become positively gripping.

In fact it’s a shame he doesn’t stick with his theme once computers had been built, because the latter part of the book spins off into cosmology, genetics, and a mosaic of reflections on culture,science, and ‘the future of mankind’. Nevertheless, for anyone remotely interested in the development of information technology, this is a book which should not be missed.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Georges Ifrah, The Computer and the Information Revolution, trans E.F.Harding, London: Harvill, 2000, pp.410, ISBN 1860467385


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Filed Under: Techno-history Tagged With: Computers, Information architecture, Mathematics, Technological history, Technology, The Computer and the Information Revolution, Theory

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