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Título: Había una vez Autor: Mariano Ávalos Editorial: Acercándonos Editorial ISBN: 978-987-4400-51-2 Reseña: Un recorrido ameno que muestra a los más pequeños cómo la computación no empezó con las computadoras. De una forma didáctica, unos simpáticos personajes del Museo de Informática de Buenos Aires muestran la necesidad de toda la humanidad de realizar cálculos, las herramientas que ha utilizado desde la antigüedad y las personas que marcaron hitos fundamentales en esta evolución y cómo llegó el ordenador a la mayoría de hogares. Internet, el almacenamiento de datos en la nube o la computación cuántica no son el final, ¿te atreves a imaginar el futuro?. Enlace a la obra: Pulsa aquí.  |
| Título: Los Lógicos Autor: Jesús Mosterin Editorial: ESPASA LIBROS ISBN: 9788467025071 Reseña: A través de las vidas fascinantes y extremas de seis pensadores geniales: Turing, Frege, Cantor, Russell, Von Neumann y Gödel, Jesús Mosterín nos introduce en un mundo tan desconocido para el gran público como fundamental para la vida. Arrostrando dificultades sin cuento, y muchas veces al borde mismo de la locura, estos fundadores de la lógica matemática moderna se enfrentaron a problemas de una dificultad inaudita, que superaron con un esfuerzo intelectual titánico y agotador. Jesús Mosterín, uno de los filósofos hispanos de mayor prestigio internacional, es profesor de Investigación en el Instituto de Filosofía del CSIC, catedrático de Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia de la Universidad de Barcelona, profesor invitado en varias universidades de Europa, Asia y América. De su extensa obra, merecen citarse Los lógicos (2000), La naturaleza humana (2006) o Ciencia viva (2006). |
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Title: ENIGMA. La extraña vida de Alan Turing Author: Riccioni, Pettinato Publisher: Norma Editorial ISBN: 978-84-679-1978-3 Review: BASADO EN LA VIDA QUE INSPIRÓ LA PELÍCULA THE IMITATION GAME Una recreación llena de humor e inteligencia de la vida del prestigioso científico Alan Turing, el padre de la inteligencia artificial que descifró el misterioso código nazi “Enigma”. Una personalidad extravagante y soñadora que llega al cómic mediante el dibujo y los colores contundentes de Tuono Pettinato y un divertido guión de Francesca Riccioni. |
| Title: Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age Author: James Essinger Publisher: ALBA TRAYECTOS ISBN: 97884-90651384 Review: 150 years after Ada’s Lovelace death, a well-known computer program was named Ada, after the one and only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron. Her crucial, but often forgotten, contribution was acknowledge in first place by mathematicians such as Alan Turing. Nowadays her work is considered groundbreaking in the digital age. Her mother, Annabella Milbanke, abandoned her husband in 1816. In her determination of moving her daughter away from ‘Byron craziness’, Ada received a really strict education focused on Mathematics in order to avoid giving free rein to his imagination. However, the young girl was already thinking about the flying machine at thirteen. At nineteen Ada knew Charles Babbage, designer of The Analytical Engine (a really sophisticate calculator), and she saw the endless possibilities of this new discovery. Her contribution was vital, in fact, as long as she was the one who distinguished between data and processing, an essential knowledge in computer science. James Essinger narrates in a detailed and entertaining manner the circumstances and development of this unusual talent flourishing in the middle of the parental fears of her stubborn mother and the legacy of her fiery father. An intimate portrait of the short but remarkable life of Ada Lovelace framed in the context of London high-class society in the nineteenth century. |
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Title: The Thilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Author: James Gleick Publisher: Editorial UOC ISBN: 9788491163374 Review: The most dynamic duo in Victorian London: Charles Babbage, the accidental inventor of the computer and his colleague Ada, countess of Lovelace, a peculiar proto-programmer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace transcribed Babbage’s construction plans for a huge analytical engine machine back in 1842, she added notes three times longer than the original text. Their notes contain the first appearance of the general theory of computing, one hundred years before the real first computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer ten years later after her work was published, and Babbage’s machines were never built. |
| Title: From the Abacus to the Digital Revolution Author: Vicenç Torra Publisher: RBA LIBROS ISBN: 9788498679908 Review: Throughout its own development, calculation tools were always the result of culture specific numbering systems and available technologies at the time. From prehistorical calculation to Roman abacus, and from Arabian algorithms to the very first calculator, history of calculation is also, to a large extent, history of numbering systems. At the end of this evolutionary process, we find computers and informatics, which were developed with the same purpose: to achieve computer tools more and more powerful in order to perform more complex calculations. Through history the evolution of calculation tools leads us from Babylon to Alexandria, from Rome to China, from Egypt to India, and over the centuries we find Ramón Llull, Charles Babbage, Turing and his Colossus…until the current computer which is already part of our daily environment. |
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Title: The Innovators. How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution Author: Walter Isaacson Publisher: DEBATE ISBN: 9788499924663 Review: After his wonderful biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson tells in The Innovators the story of the people who invented the Computer and the Internet, it is a book bound to become the definite history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to understand all the process of innovation and who were its creators. It is the story of how their brains worked and why were they so creative, but it is also the story of how their capability to cooperate and to master the art of work together made them even more creative. In the era which promotes innovation, creativity and teamwork, The Innovators reflects how that happen. |
| Original Title: Une histoire de l’informatique Author: Philippe Breton Publisher: CATEDRA ISBN: 9788434708181 Review: How IT was born? How we have passed through Ancient dreams about fantastic creatures to such an extraordinary evolution of contemporary computers? How and how much present-day culture has change? Philippe Breton tries to find the answer to this and some other questions through a global approach to history of this technique, and a rigorous analysis of social and ethic risks that it involves. It is written for all sectors of society, it covers both technical questions from newcomer readers worried about the impact of new technology, and also concerns from the specialist who ignores his own assimilation process inside modern society. Philippe Breton is an investigator inside the Scientific Researcher and Study Group of the Louis Pasteur University Strasbourg I, he is also Computer History lecturer at Strasbourg II University as well as consultant in Communications Department at the Quebec University in Montreal. |
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Title: From Euclid to Java Author: Ricardo Peña Marí Publisher: S.L. NIVOLA LIBROS Y EDICIONES ISBN: 9788496566149 Review: Our history is as old of humanity itself, as even back in ancient Mesopotamia algorithms were used to describe certain calculations related to commercial transactions. These algorithms together with mathematic development have always gone hand in hand. In the 17th century first mechanic tools for calculation appeared as desktop calculators, and in the 19th century first program-controlled machines were designed. However early computers, as we know them, date from the mid-20th century. From that point, algorithms reached an unprecedented level of development. This work reviews the trajectory of algorithms, focusing on more recent times. At some point, approximately around 1960, the book’s emphasis goes on to describe programming languages, which is the appropriate tool for communicate algorithms to machines that have to run them. |
| Title: Breaking Codes. Life and Legacy of Turing. Author: Manuel de León y Ágata Timón Publisher: Catarata ISBN: 9788483198858 Review:This book attempts both to draw the life of British mathematician Alan Mathison Turing, and going over his major achievements. Alan Turing was certainly one of the most brilliant Scientifics of 20th century, and his work laid the foundations of what we know today as informatics. Turing was a decisive figure in WWII, since the end of the conflict was accelerated by his cryptographic work, he breached the security of German communication breaking the codes of Enigma machines. His life was not made any easier by the fact that he was a homosexual. He was pursued and condemned for his sexuality, which clashed with strict moral codes of British society at that time. To this day, his tragic death by poisoning remains an unsolved mystery. |
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Title: Turing’s Cathedral Author: George Dysson Publisher: DEBATE ISBN: 9788499922508 Review: : “It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence” a 24-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. A small group of men and women met in Princeton, New Jersey, around the 40s and 50s. They were led by John Von Neumann, and their common goal was to build one of the world’s earliest computers which would materialise the vision of Alan Turing about a universal machine. Codes generated inside this 5-kilobytes embryo of universe (less storage than a single screen icon from a present-day computer needs) began to distinguish between numbers meaning things, and numbers doing things, and then our universe was forever changed. Turing’s Cathedral tells the story of how the most constructive invention of 20th century, digital computer, was built and who were its creators. A prophetic and historical narrative which describes how that code succeed in conquering the world and presents the future of digital world. |
| Original Title: Ocho Quilates (Una historia de la Edad de Oro del software español (1983-1986)) (I) Author: Jaume Esteve Gutiérrez Publisher: STAR-T MAGAZINE BOOKS ASIN: B008FZPGTC Review: Did you know that twenty years ago Spain was one of the main videogame powers in Europe? “Ocho Quilates, Una historia de la Edad de Oro del software español (1983-1986) (I)” is an overview over the origins of Spanish videogame industry in times of 8-bits.You may remember the 80s as the years of Nocilla sandwich after school, Naranjito, The A-Team and Mecano. But 80s was also an historical point in videogame’s world. It was the time when they started to evolve into the huge beast that we know today thanks to 8-bits microcomputers as ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, or Commodore 64. Surrounding this technological mess a beardless bunch of young men (and some just a little older) built up a nonexistent industry at that time. Companies such as Dinamic, ERBE, Made in Spain, Opera and Topo won a place in the hearts of an entire generation of Spaniards who found that computers were more than a tool to do their homework. If your hair stands on end when you hear talking about La Abadía del Crimen, Navy Moves, Mad Mix Game, Livingstone, Supongo, La Aventura Original, Abu Simbel Profanation, Silent Shadow, Sir Fred, La Pulga, Mot, Lorna, El Misterio del Nilo, After the War, Emilio Butragueño o Fernando Martín. Or if tears come to your eyes when someone mentions Afteroids, Army Moves, Fred, Goody, Desperado, Narco Police, Risky Woods, Rocky, Perico Delgado, Humphrey o París – Dakar, welcome, you are at home. |
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Original Title: Ocho Quilates (Una historia de la Edad de Oro del software español (1987-1992)) (II) Author: Jaume Esteve Gutiérrez Publisher: STAR-T MAGAZINE BOOKS ASIN: B009XUDMC6 Review: Did you know that twenty years ago Spain was one of the main videogame powers in Europe? “Ocho Quilates, Una historia de la Edad de Oro del software español (1983-1986) (I)” is an overview over the origins of Spanish videogame industry in times of 8-bits.You may remember the 80s as the years of Nocilla sandwich after school, Naranjito, The A-Team and Mecano. But 80s was also an historical point in videogame’s world. It was the time when they started to evolve into the huge beast that we know today thanks to 8-bits microcomputers as ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, or Commodore 64. Surrounding this technological mess a beardless bunch of young men (and some just a little older) built up a nonexistent industry at that time. Companies such as Dinamic, ERBE, Made in Spain, Opera and Topo won a place in the hearts of an entire generation of Spaniards who found that computers were more than a tool to do their homework. If your hair stands on end when you hear talking about La Abadía del Crimen, Navy Moves, Mad Mix Game, Livingstone, Supongo, La Aventura Original, Abu Simbel Profanation, Silent Shadow, Sir Fred, La Pulga, Mot, Lorna, El Misterio del Nilo, After the War, Emilio Butragueño o Fernando Martín. Or if tears come to your eyes when someone mentions Afteroids, Army Moves, Fred, Goody, Desperado, Narco Police, Risky Woods, Rocky, Perico Delgado, Humphrey o París – Dakar, welcome, you are at home. |
| Original Title: Obsequium. Un relato cultural, tecnológico y emocional de La Abadía del Crimen Author: Jaume Esteve Gutiérrez Publisher: OCHO QUILATES ISBN: 9788461695355 Review: There is no game from the Golden Era of Spanish software which stirs debate more than The Abbey of Crime, and Obsequium was written in order to provide its followers – and why not? Also its detractors -, enough elements to be able to study this game from different approaches. What was the background when the game was launched? Was it a good adaptation of The Name of the Rose? Why Juan Decán fought so hard to include this controversial camera system? Was the code set by Paco Menéndez a brilliant idea or a nonsense in binary code? How was it received by the press? And among gamers? How far has come its legacy in videogames and social fields? These and other questions will be discussed here. This book was coordinated by Jaume Esteve, also José Manuel Braña Álvarez, Enrique Colinet, José Manuel Fernández, Antonio Giner, José Antonio Morales, Juan Manuel Moreno, Manuel Pazos y José Luis Sanz have contributed to the elaboration of the text. |
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Title: The Man Who Knew Too Much. Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer Author: David Leavitt Publisher: Antoni Bosch ISBN: 9788495348302 Review: Prosecuted by authorities and his colleges, British mathematician Alan Turing committed suicide back in 1954 when he ate a cyanide poisoned apple. He was the pioneer in Pure Mathematics field, the mastermind to crack the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany to send its encrypted orders, father of ideas that contribute to the computer invention, openly homosexual against the social convictions of that time and even the law, eccentric and brilliant character who was a victim of naivety and frankness. |