Electronic Dreams

Electronic Dreams PDF Author: Tom Lean
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472918355
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.

Electronic Dreams

Electronic Dreams PDF Author: Tom Lean
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472918355
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams PDF Author: Philip K. Dick
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 1328995097
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
From the iconic author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, stories that inspired the original dramatic series. Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than one hundred short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams collects ten of the best. In “Autofac,” Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. “Exhibit Piece” and “The Commuter” feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists. And “The Hanging Stranger” provides a thrilling, dark political allegory as relevant today as it was when Dick wrote it at the height of the Cold War. Strange, funny, and powerful, the stories in this collection highlight a master at work, encapsulating his boundless imagination and deep understanding of the human condition. Praise for Philip K. Dick “In his top form, Philip K. Dick rivals Kurt Vonnegut.”—New York Times “Dick is one of the ten best American writers of the twentieth century, which is saying a lot. Dick was a kind of Kafka steeped in LSD and rage.”—Roberto Bolaño

Wrinkles in Time

Wrinkles in Time PDF Author: George Smoot
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061344443
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Astrophysicist George Smoot spent decades pursuing the origin of the cosmos, "the holy grail of science," a relentless hunt that led him from the rain forests of Brazil to the frozen wastes of Antarctica. In his search he struggled against time, the elements, and the forces of ignorance and bureaucratic insanity. Finally, after years of research, Smoot and his dedicated team of Berkeley researchers succeeded in proving the unprovable—uncovering, inarguably and for all time, the secrets of the creation of the universe. Wrinkles in Time describes this startling discovery that would usher in a new scientific age—and win Smoot the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Slot Car Dreams

Slot Car Dreams PDF Author: Philippe de Lespinay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578853581
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
320 pages of slot car history with 750 photos - soft cover

Electric Dreams

Electric Dreams PDF Author: Ted Friedman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814727395
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage’s “difference engine” in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems. Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

The Electric State

The Electric State PDF Author: Simon Stålenhag
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501181432
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
NPR Best Books of 2018 A teen girl and her robot embark on a cross-country mission in this illustrated science fiction story, perfect for fans of Ready Player One and Black Mirror. In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.

Electric Dreams

Electric Dreams PDF Author: Caroline Kettlewell
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780786712717
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Presents the story of a North Carolina high school whose students successfully built an award-winning electric car.

The Digital Dystopias of Black Mirror and Electric Dreams

The Digital Dystopias of Black Mirror and Electric Dreams PDF Author: Steven Keslowitz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476678685
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This critical examination of two dystopian television series--Black Mirror and Electric Dreams--focuses on pop culture depictions of technology and its impact on human existence. Representations of a wide range of modern and futuristic technologies are explored, from early portrayals of artificial intelligence (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) to digital consciousness transference as envisioned in Black Mirror's "San Junipero." These representations reflect societal anxieties about unfettered technological development and how a world infused with invasive artificial intelligence might redefine life and death, power and control. The impact of social media platforms is considered in the contexts of modern-day communication and political manipulation.

Einstein's Dreams

Einstein's Dreams PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307789748
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence. “A magical, metaphysical realm ... Captivating, enchanting, delightful.” —The New York Times Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, about time, relativity and physics. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar. Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.

Digital Dreams: Exploring the Computer as an Art Medium

Digital Dreams: Exploring the Computer as an Art Medium PDF Author: Harry Borgman
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477181326
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
Harry Borgman's professional career has spanned many fields including graphic design, cartooning and illustration. He was art director on the Chevrolet account at Campbell - Ewald advertising agency and the Chariman of the Advertising Department at the Society of Arts and Crafts ( now the College for Creative Studies ). He has written several art technique books for Watson Guptill Publications, Dover Publications recently reprinting his book "Pen and Pencil Drawing Techniques." For many years he worked as a freelance artist in Detroit, New York and Paris, France. As a painter he works in the watercolor and acrylic mediums and is also very active as a sculptor, doing wood carvings as well as wood and metal constructions. Recently he has been experimenting with the computer medium, currently creating photomontages and collages on the computer for a proposed exhibition.