Books that will wire you up with technology

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Two years after his manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, caused a stir in the IT community, Eric Raymond gathered together his thoughts on open software development in a book of the same title. Eleven years later, we can see how so much of the philosophy outlined in the book has created a new paradigm for computing. Possibly the most influential computer book of them all.

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The Cuckoo's Egg

This is an engaging story of how an astronomer turned computer expert uncovered a cracker from another continent holds the attention from start to finish, providing useful information on security techniques and Unix programming along the way. 

The administrators who failed to block Gary McKinnon could have learned a lot from this book: an absolute classic.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, 1989, Bodley Head, ISBN 0-370316258

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Showstopper

This tells the compelling story of the development of Windows NT, the software that was to drive Microsoft's dominance on the server, just as it had dominated the desktop. 

This is a gripping tale of how the project came together, starting right from the start. It also made a geek star of earthy, no-nonsense hacker Dave Cutler who led the project - the author does well to bring out the personalities involved without losing sight of the focus.

Showstopper! by G.Pascal Zachary, 1994, Warner Books, ISBN 0-751516295

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Colossus Bletchley Park's Greatest Sercet

The code-breaking work at Bletchley Park still holds a fascination for us today - the work has a resonance too in the way that intelligence agencies use some of the same techniques to crack terrorist cells. It's a shame that the government doesn't recognise this and support the development of the Bletchley Park site - this book explains exactly why we should treasure this site.

Colossus by Paul Gannon, 2006,Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-843543303

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Accidental Empires

If you ever wondered how the PC and its software world came to seem so important to so many people, this sardonic (and strangely out of print) masterpiece sets out to explain it. 

Noyce, Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, Manzi, and many others are all here. If some of these names and stories behind them have faded a bit for a world wowed by the Internet, none of it would have happened without the "bunch of boys who banded together to give themselves power." What made some more successful than others turned out to be the speed at which they left behind technology for its own sake and got into bucks and business. Apart from being informative, it's very funny.

Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely, 1996, Penguin, ISBN 978 0140258264

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The New New Thing

The New New Thing is really an old old kind of book, with more in common with biographies of 19th century adventurers and soldiers of fortune than with books about Internet startups and the new economy.

It relates the wild and unlikely tale of Jim Clark, with lots of gossipy detail and no useful information. His ability to guess what the "new new thing" will be and to make billions from it, is presented as an unaccountable, almost magical power. Wow! he sets a record by starting three multi-billion-dollar companies -- Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. And our sense of wonder is heightened by the lack of any connection to practical reality, any lessons of experience that someone could learn from this.

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10 best inventions of 2010

Looxcie

Just when you thought you'd seen it all — and recorded it — Looxcie, a camera worn over the ear, ups the ante. Invented by a parent who found himself fumbling with video cameras while trying to record children's parties, Looxcie can capture everything the user sees for up to five hours, hands-free. And with the press of a button, a clip of the last 30 seconds of film can be sent to a Facebook page, YouTube or a preset e-mail address — making Looxcie the perfect device for the age of audio-video oversharing.

Square

Square, which launched Tuesday with iPhone and Android support, is a small, plastic cube about the size of two Chiclets. From its bottom side an audio connector plugs into the headphone port on your phone. A slot in the cube lets you pass a credit card through. When you do, a reader converts the data from the magnetic strip into an audio signal and passes it on to software on the phone. Square appears to be a great option to let anyone with something to sell accept credit cards as payment. And it will accept just about any type of general credit card, including Visa, Master Card and American Express.

Spray-On Fabric

A liquid mixture developed by Imperial College London and a company called Fabrican lets you spray clothes directly onto your body, using aerosol technology. After the spray dries, it creates a thin layer of fabric that can be peeled off, washed and reworn. 

The spray-on fabric consists of short fibers that are combined with polymers to bind them together and a solvent that delivers the fabric in liquid form. The solvent evaporates when the spray touches the surface. 

The fabric is formed by cross-linking fibers, which cling to one another to create the garment.

The spray-on fabric is pretty versatile. It can be created in many colors and and use different types of fibers ranging from natural to the synthetic, says the company.

The Seed Cathedral

The seed cathedral at the Shanghai World Expo UK's pavilion is exactly that: a 66-feet tall shrine accented with 60,000 25 feet long fiber-optics rods in its exterior, each of which contains one or more seeds encased at its tip. And awe-inspiring it certainly is. The rods funnel light into the Seed Cathedral's interior during the day and carry interior light out outward at night, casting a beautiful glow around the structure. The fiber-optic rods sway in the breeze, conjuring images of tall stalks of grass waving in the wind or even the tiny filament hairs that grow on some seeds. From inside, the movement of the clouds above and the swaying of the fibers can give the sensation that cathedral is moving, or perhaps breathing.

3-D Bioprinter

Spare parts are available for virtually any machine ever invented. So why not the human body? San Diego–based companies Invetech and Organovo have developed what amounts to a dot-matrix printer for human organs. The device, small enough to fit into a sterile biosafety cabinet, consists of two printheads — one that sprays out a gel that forms a sort of armature for an organ and another that fills in that scaffolding with living cells. The printing tip positions cells with a precision within microns. Livers, kidneys and other replacement components — including teeth — could be built on demand, with no wait for a donor and less risk of rejection, since the cells are harvested straight from the patient. No word yet on a parts-and-labor warranty.

Power-Aware Cord

The Interactive Institute, a Swedish nonprofit that explores technology and design, had an idea: what if you could actually see the electricity flowing into your machines? Power Aware Cord, a power strip whose connecting cable glows and pulses. Its electroluminescent wires embedded inside get brighter when more power flows through, pulsing and scintillating with various patterns that are difficult to ignore. 

While this appears to be just a design concept so far, it looks purty and might just remind us of what power-sucking bastards we are. 

Amtrak's Beef-Powered Train

On its Heartland Flyer — a daily service between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, Texas —Amtrak is taking tentative steps toward a greener, low-carbon future. Amtrak is testing a new train and it is powered by beef-based biofuel.  It will be powered by a mix of 80% regular diesel and 20% "beef-based biofuel. 

Biodiesel from beef burns cleaner than plant biodiesel, though it may not be scalable outside the beef belt.

The Deceitful Robot

But Georgia Tech's new robot, which uses algorithms to detect conflict and then assess the best method of escaping from it, can create a false trail, send erroneous communications and hide from an enemy. Although its main purpose will most likely be to aid military search-and-rescue operations, its ability to deceive also brings it closer to successful interactions with humans.

Electric-Car Charging Stations

Coulomb Technologies is working to break that deadlock. The company is building a system of automated charging stations in public places that are connected to utilities, so the charge for your charge can be added to your home electricity bill. And if your utility hasn't partnered with Coulomb, you can call a toll-free number and pay with your credit card.

X-Flex Blast Protection

This startlingly resilient covering is designed to reinforce buildings against man-made blasts, flying shrapnel and destabilizing natural disasters. Once the wallpaper is applied, its Kevlar-like material, combined with an elastic polymer wrap, becomes virtually stronger than the wall it's shielding — so strong that it's being considered to protect U.S. military bases overseas.