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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010274577 | UG730 G74 2010 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Everything has a beginning. None was more profound--and quite as unexpected--than Information Technology. Here for the first time is the untold story of how our new age came to be and the bright boys who made it happen. What began on the bare floor of an old laundry building eventually grew to rival in size the Manhattan Project. The unexpected consequence of that journey was huge---what we now know as Information Technology.
For sixty years the bright boys have been totally anonymous while their achievements have become a way of life for all of us. "Bright Boys" brings them home. By 1950 they'd built the world's first real-time computer. Three years later they one-upped themselves when they switched on the world's first digital network. In 1953 their work was met with incredulity and completely overlooked. By 1968 their work was gospel. Today, it's the way of the world. Special Foreword by Jay W. Forrester Includes notes by chapter, bibliography, index, and portfolio of archival photography.
Tom Green talks about his book in a recent video available on YouTube.f archival photography. Tom Green talks about his book in a recent video available on YouTube.Author Notes
Tom Green is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer, producer and playwright who uses his print and video expertise to tell stories about science, technology and engineering. His stage plays were produced at Boston's Next Move Theatre and then reproduced as radio plays for National Public Radio. He also wrote and produced the forum-based TV pilot "Lifelines" at Boston's WCVB-TV, Channel 5. In addition to working for various companies as a writer, editor, and producer, he owned and operated his own video production company for ten years where he produced video for corporations, broadcast, and cable TV. Since 1995, Green has evolved his storytelling skills and video-making experience in tandem with the arrival and growth of the Internet and Web.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
After WW II, the Soviet Union's atomic and hydrogen bomb tests and aviation advances, combined with Stalin's quest for territorial acquisition, prompted the US military to seek a real-time, command-and-control, early-warning, air-defense radar system to detect a Soviet air invasion of the US. The task of building such a system fell to a team of "bright boys," primarily MIT physicists and electrical engineers, led by Jay Forrester and Robert Everett of MIT's Servomechanisms Laboratory. By the early 1950s, the team had designed the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE). A number of unforeseen, largely beneficial, consequences resulted from this project. These included the creation of systems design and analysis as well as the development of information theory, the digital computer, and the Internet. The research conducted by writer, producer, and playwright Green is impressive, but the narrative lacks a sharp focus and is more an encomium to Forrester, Everett, and the bright boys than an objective, uncritical historical account. Particularly grating is the term "bright boys." Although it is a catchy, alliterative title, the author uses it so effusively throughout the account that it is bound to minimize the undeniably impressive achievements of other team members. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. D. M. Gilbert Maine Maritime Academy
