![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe" *Penguin)
This book was okay. The most terrible thing about it was how the author seemed to jump from one subject to another. He talks about how everything that was computable was attempted to be computed on early computers. George Dyson seems to want to do too much with his limited space in this book. He goes from the problem of Nuclear Weapons development to the creation of digital life.
Although this book is called Turing's Cathedral, it's mostly about John von Neumann and how he went flitting about and making advances in early computer technology. Even if he didn't make the advances himself, von Neumann always found a way to be involved. There's nothing really wrong with this, but, it is slightly misleading. Turing doesn't even come into the picture until the thirteenth chapter, causing me to wonder why it was called this at all. I mean, I guess the point of the entire book is to convey the enormity of Turing's Universal Machine, and the influences it has on the present.
Due to the meandering nature of the author's attention, this book is comparable to Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon in some ways. It also made it so I wanted to drop this book numerous times. The author starts out conventionally enough, by talking about 1953 and the first Hydrogen Bomb. He then wanders over to the creation of New Jersey...? But wait no, this matters because New Jersey is where Princeton is, and Princeton is where the IAS (Institute for Advanced Study) is located.So we get to find out that William Penn, the famous Quaker that founded Pennsylvania also had a hand in founding New Jersey.
*Sigh* In any case, this book is not really that well organized, though I suppose it does contain a number of neat old photographs.
In any case, I might read this book again but it would have to be for a pretty good reason.
This book was okay. The most terrible thing about it was how the author seemed to jump from one subject to another. He talks about how everything that was computable was attempted to be computed on early computers. George Dyson seems to want to do too much with his limited space in this book. He goes from the problem of Nuclear Weapons development to the creation of digital life.
Although this book is called Turing's Cathedral, it's mostly about John von Neumann and how he went flitting about and making advances in early computer technology. Even if he didn't make the advances himself, von Neumann always found a way to be involved. There's nothing really wrong with this, but, it is slightly misleading. Turing doesn't even come into the picture until the thirteenth chapter, causing me to wonder why it was called this at all. I mean, I guess the point of the entire book is to convey the enormity of Turing's Universal Machine, and the influences it has on the present.
Due to the meandering nature of the author's attention, this book is comparable to Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon in some ways. It also made it so I wanted to drop this book numerous times. The author starts out conventionally enough, by talking about 1953 and the first Hydrogen Bomb. He then wanders over to the creation of New Jersey...? But wait no, this matters because New Jersey is where Princeton is, and Princeton is where the IAS (Institute for Advanced Study) is located.So we get to find out that William Penn, the famous Quaker that founded Pennsylvania also had a hand in founding New Jersey.
*Sigh* In any case, this book is not really that well organized, though I suppose it does contain a number of neat old photographs.
In any case, I might read this book again but it would have to be for a pretty good reason.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}