A New History of Modern Computing is the must-read story of how we got from ENIAC to Tesla.
by Thomas Haigh and Paul E. Ceruzzi is a must-read for investors, entrepreneurs, executives, and anyone interested in understanding the technology that is embedded in the lives of most of the world’s population.
of computing, why knowing where you came from is a foundation of success, why tradition is a key to innovation. “Architectural advances pioneered by Cary supercomputers now help your phone to play Netflix video more effectively” is one example highlighting the remarkable continuity of computing, as opposed to the make-believe “disruptive innovations.
Still, the new stages eventually dissolved the business models of the past, leading to today’s reliance by many large and small computer companies on new sources of revenues such as advertising. Eating other industries, especially media businesses, brought on huge profits and, eventually, serious indigestion.
As Haigh and Ceruzzi write “early computers wasted much of their incredibly expensive time waiting for data to arrive from peripherals.” This problem of latency, of efficient access to data, played a crucial role in the computing transformations of subsequent years, but it has been overshadowed by the dynamics of an industry driven by the rapid and reliable advances in processing speeds.