Electronic Dreams
Electronic Dreams

Author: Tom Lean

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-02-11

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1472918355

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How did computers invade the homes and cultural life of 1980s Britain? Remember the ZX Spectrum? Ever have a go at programming with its stretchy rubber keys? How about the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, or Commodore 64? Did you marvel at the immense galaxies of Elite, master digital kung-fu in Way of the Exploding Fist or lose yourself in the surreal caverns of Manic Miner? For anyone who was a kid in the 1980s, these iconic computer brands are the stuff of legend. In Electronic Dreams, Tom Lean tells the story of how computers invaded British homes for the first time, as people set aside their worries of electronic brains and Big Brother and embraced the wonder-technology of the 1980s. This book charts the history of the rise and fall of the home computer, the family of futuristic and quirky machines that took computing from the realm of science and science fiction to being a user-friendly domestic technology. It is a tale of unexpected consequences, when the machines that parents bought to help their kids with homework ended up giving birth to the video games industry, and of unrealised ambitions, like the ahead-of-its-time Prestel network that first put the British home online but failed to change the world. Ultimately, it's the story of the people who made the boom happen, the inventors and entrepreneurs like Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar seeking new markets, bedroom programmers and computer hackers, and the millions of everyday folk who bought in to the electronic dream and let the computer into their lives.

Funding a Revolution
Funding a Revolution

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1999-02-11

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0309062780

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The past 50 years have witnessed a revolution in computing and related communications technologies. The contributions of industry and university researchers to this revolution are manifest; less widely recognized is the major role the federal government played in launching the computing revolution and sustaining its momentum. Funding a Revolution examines the history of computing since World War II to elucidate the federal government's role in funding computing research, supporting the education of computer scientists and engineers, and equipping university research labs. It reviews the economic rationale for government support of research, characterizes federal support for computing research, and summarizes key historical advances in which government-sponsored research played an important role. Funding a Revolution contains a series of case studies in relational databases, the Internet, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality that demonstrate the complex interactions among government, universities, and industry that have driven the field. It offers a series of lessons that identify factors contributing to the success of the nation's computing enterprise and the government's role within it.

Popular Fads and Crazes through American History [2 volumes]
Popular Fads and Crazes through American History [2 volumes]

Author: Nancy Hendricks

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-08-17

Total Pages: 804

ISBN-13:

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This informative two-volume set provides readers with an understanding of the fads and crazes that have taken America by storm from colonial times to the present. Entries cover a range of topics, including food, entertainment, fashion, music, and language. Why could hula hoops and TV westerns only have been found in every household in the 1950s? What murdered Russian princess can be seen in one of the first documented selfies, taken in 1914? This book answers those questions and more in its documentation of all of the most captivating trends that have defined American popular culture since before the country began. Entries are well-researched and alphabetized by decade. At the start of every section is an insightful historical overview of the decade, and the set uniquely illustrates what today's readers have in common with the past. It also contains a Glossary of Slang for each decade as well as a bibliography, plus suggestions for further reading for each entry. Students and readers interested in history will enjoy discovering trends through the years in such areas as fashion, movies, music, and sports.

Innovation Diffusion and Political Control of Energy Technologies
Innovation Diffusion and Political Control of Energy Technologies

Author: Karl Mathias Weber

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 3642586570

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Two general questions stood at the beginning of this PhD-thesis, namely: • What are the mechanisms which lead to the emergence and establishment of new technologies? • How can this process of technological change be influenced politically? In this sense, conceptual and theoretical interests were the early driving forces of the research work. This is also reflected in the considerable attention paid to the nature of technological change and political control. The result is an holistic per spective which builds on inputs from different disciplines and aims at dynamic interpretation. This, however, created a severe methodological problem: How could such a comprehensive perspective be used constructively? To develop this link between theory and forward-looking, policy-oriented analysis, and to devise a methodology which showed explicitly how this approach could be used in a con structive way were in fact the major challenges of this research project. The appli cation to the example of combined heat and power generation, and the comparison of the developments in the UK and in Germany serve the purpose to demonstrate how this approach and methodology can be implemented in practice. These as pects were also of particular interest to the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), one ofthe institutes of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, where most of the research work reported in this PhD-thesis was carried out.