- Paperback: 228 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (Feb 1 1989)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393333213
- ISBN-13: 978-0393333213
- Product Dimensions: 2.2 x 1.4 x 0.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 463 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
This is a positive, readable book about computers and people, not as in Sherry Turkle's best-selling The Second Self ( LJ 6/15/84), but told historically, and through anecdote. The author, a Nobel Prize winner and Bell Labs vice president, reveals the most through the insightful and diverse examples he gives. He talks about the computer's origins, workings, applications, limitations, management, artifical intelligence, and super capabilities. Penzias emphasizes that "the world's most powerful information tool will continue to be the human mind." This is a rare title to be enjoyed by the technical and nontechnical reader alike.
- Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Penzias, Nobel Prize winner and head of research at AT&T's Bell Laboratories, guides readers through the computer revolution and brings them out on the other side, more comfortable about machines, about people, and about their lives together.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
A History of AT&T,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ideas And Information (Hardcover)
Though someone looking for a history of AT&T would be disappointed by this book, someone NOT looking for a history of AT&T may find the examples monotonous after a while (they were entertaining, but I was working on research -- I needed significant "thought"). Aside from the fact that the content is very dated, Penzias could have turned out a much more powerful book if he had started with his ending.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ideas and Information.,
By Wesley L. Janssen - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ideas And Information (Hardcover)
Inspiration as opposed to instruction. Mind as opposed to machine...Read any physics text or popularization of the past thirty-five years and you are virtually certain to encounter Arno Penzias. He received the Nobel Prize for physics by detecting the cosmic microwave background radiation that George Gamow had predicted two decades earlier. Theorists sometimes suggest that Gamow's Nobel somehow landed accidentally in Penzias' empirical lap. One imagines that Penzias might be tempted to barrow a line from Rodney Dangerfield: "I tell ya, I don't get no respect." He doesn't do that. Anyway, when I spotted this book in a used bookstore I happily nabbed it. The author's theme in this volume is computability -- how it works, what it is, and what it isn't. The book is highly readable and makes for a sound introduction to what computer software is, and to how artificial intelligence and human intelligence are, foundationally, two very different things. The strong AI types don't want to hear this stuff and will likely complain that Penzias' book is "dated." I will say that only the author's examples/ allegories are dated. Technological gadgetry changes quite a bit in 14 years, but the examples are only examples. Programming is still programming; it is still a process of numerical reduction. It is still something far different than human intuition. With a modicum of updates, Penzias' thesis might easily read as a more current set of arguments and observations. Consider this book a springboard into the work of Roger Penrose (uh-oh, you'll be mixing empirical guy and theoretical guy!). Penzias says, "If you don't want to be replaced by a machine, don't act like one." Machines are quite useful, but your mind is not a mere machine. Use it to its strength -- be creative, be non-linear. This empirical guy sounds a lot like a theoretical guy. Somewhere an ardent reductionist is cringing.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great discussion of estimating information --,
By "geowyn" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ideas and Information: Managing in a High-Tech World (Paperback)
I give this book four stars just for the section on estimation -- can you calculate the number of barbers in the United States by using common sense and a few simple assumptions? How about the speed of the Mississippi river? As another reviewer has said, the book is not the most up to date and does not systematically address all aspects of the topic but provides some interesting insights that make it worth a look.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
A History of AT&T,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ideas And Information (Hardcover)
Though someone looking for a history of AT&T would be disappointed by this book, someone NOT looking for a history of AT&T may find the examples monotonous after a while (they were entertaining, but I was working on research -- I needed significant "thought"). Aside from the fact that the content is very dated, Penzias could have turned out a much more powerful book if he had started with his ending.
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