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The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital
The genesis of the digital idea and why it transformed civilization
A few short decades ago, we were informed by the smooth signals of analog television and radio; we communicated using our analog telephones; and we even computed with analog computers. Today our world is digital, built with zeros and ones. Why did this revolution occur? The Discrete Charm of the Machine explains, in an engaging and accessible manner, the varied physical and logical reasons behind this radical transformation.
The spark of individual genius shines through this story of innovation: the stored program of Jacquard’s loom; Charles Babbage’s logical branching; Alan Turing’s brilliant abstraction of the discrete machine; Harry Nyquist’s foundation for digital signal processing; Claude Shannon’s breakthrough insights into the meaning of information and bandwidth; and Richard Feynman’s prescient proposals for nanotechnology and quantum computing. Ken Steiglitz follows the progression of these ideas in the building of our digital world, from the internet and artificial intelligence to the edge of the unknown. Are questions like the famous traveling salesman problem truly beyond the reach of ordinary digital computers? Can quantum computers transcend these barriers? Does a mysterious magical power reside in the analog mechanisms of the brain? Steiglitz concludes by confronting the moral and aesthetic questions raised by the development of artificial intelligence and autonomous robots.
The Discrete Charm of the Machine examines why our information technology, the lifeblood of our civilization, became digital, and challenges us to think about where its future trajectory may lead.
A few short decades ago, we were informed by the smooth signals of analog television and radio; we communicated using our analog telephones; and we even computed with analog computers. Today our world is digital, built with zeros and ones. Why did this revolution occur? The Discrete Charm of the Machine explains, in an engaging and accessible manner, the varied physical and logical reasons behind this radical transformation.
The spark of individual genius shines through this story of innovation: the stored program of Jacquard’s loom; Charles Babbage’s logical branching; Alan Turing’s brilliant abstraction of the discrete machine; Harry Nyquist’s foundation for digital signal processing; Claude Shannon’s breakthrough insights into the meaning of information and bandwidth; and Richard Feynman’s prescient proposals for nanotechnology and quantum computing. Ken Steiglitz follows the progression of these ideas in the building of our digital world, from the internet and artificial intelligence to the edge of the unknown. Are questions like the famous traveling salesman problem truly beyond the reach of ordinary digital computers? Can quantum computers transcend these barriers? Does a mysterious magical power reside in the analog mechanisms of the brain? Steiglitz concludes by confronting the moral and aesthetic questions raised by the development of artificial intelligence and autonomous robots.
The Discrete Charm of the Machine examines why our information technology, the lifeblood of our civilization, became digital, and challenges us to think about where its future trajectory may lead.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published February 5, 2019
14 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 2, 2019
There is a Publisher's Weekly review that reflects my view pretty strongly. The author writes like someone so long enmeshed in his field that he can't even comprehend how to bridge the gap to the lay reader any more (and I have a graduate degree in Chemistry, so I am not a "bad at math" person). The general premise of the books is interesting, and I understand what he was attempting, but it seems unlikely that anyone without a mathematics or information theory degree would follow what he was saying, particularly in the 3rd part of the book (almost 40% of the contents). Another 100 pages and the help of a young graduate student who still remembers a time when he didn't understand the meaning of "3-SAT' and "NP-complete" as a co-author probably would have been quite valuable.
Given that I only have two goodreads friends and they both have Math degrees, let me know if either of you want a free copy of the book. Maybe you'll like it more than me...
Given that I only have two goodreads friends and they both have Math degrees, let me know if either of you want a free copy of the book. Maybe you'll like it more than me...
September 25, 2022
Please consider reading the full version of this review at my website and support independent internet
If you were to walk up to me and ask, “Hey, how do I efficiency drill holes into this circuitboard?” I would pretend I didn’t hear you, avert my gaze, and continue on about my day. If you were to ask me to read a book about the same concern, I would sigh and do a dismissive little handwave toward my “to-be-read” pile. But tell me you’re interested in discussing how to most efficiently help a little peddler navigate from small village to village, and boy oh boy does my heart begin to race.
Part of my “workflow” for reviewing books is selecting what I think is going to be slower, more dense reads when I’m behind on writing. This intentional hobbling sometimes backfires, as was the case here: what I expected to be laborious ended up being an absolute pleasure. An embarrassment of riches, The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital took vacuum tubes and transistors and made them both approachable. It did exactly what it promised, vaulting over the expertise gap to reach me, a tech dabbler, and teach me exactly why our world is digital. It did a lot more, too, but give it up for a non-fiction book that more than lives up to the inherent promise of its subtitle, as rare a bird as I’ve found.
If you were to walk up to me and ask, “Hey, how do I efficiency drill holes into this circuitboard?” I would pretend I didn’t hear you, avert my gaze, and continue on about my day. If you were to ask me to read a book about the same concern, I would sigh and do a dismissive little handwave toward my “to-be-read” pile. But tell me you’re interested in discussing how to most efficiently help a little peddler navigate from small village to village, and boy oh boy does my heart begin to race.
Part of my “workflow” for reviewing books is selecting what I think is going to be slower, more dense reads when I’m behind on writing. This intentional hobbling sometimes backfires, as was the case here: what I expected to be laborious ended up being an absolute pleasure. An embarrassment of riches, The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital took vacuum tubes and transistors and made them both approachable. It did exactly what it promised, vaulting over the expertise gap to reach me, a tech dabbler, and teach me exactly why our world is digital. It did a lot more, too, but give it up for a non-fiction book that more than lives up to the inherent promise of its subtitle, as rare a bird as I’ve found.
December 20, 2023
The analog signals of our televisions, radios, telephones, and computers gave way to digital signals several decades ago. Professor Kenneth Steiglitz (Princeton U.) explains the main reasons behind this transformation. In doing so, he pays tribute to the contributions of geniuses such as Joseph Marie Jacquard (stored-program loom), Charles Babbage (program branching), Alan Turing (discrete abstract computer), Harry Nyquist (digital signal processing), Claude Shannon (notions of information & bandwidth), and Richard Feynman (nanotechnology & quantum computing).
Steiglitz then proceeds to tell us how the brilliant ideas listed above led to transformative systems and applications such as the Internet, artificial intelligence, and autonomous robots, how certain problems continue to challenge us with present-day technology, and whether the toughest of these problems (e.g., traveling salesperson) will be made tractable by quantum computing or by new technologies mimicking the analog/digital mechanisms of the brain.
The history of how the digital idea took over to become the lifeblood of our civilization is impressive, but picturing where this revolutionary idea may take us in the years and decades to come is breathtaking.
Steiglitz then proceeds to tell us how the brilliant ideas listed above led to transformative systems and applications such as the Internet, artificial intelligence, and autonomous robots, how certain problems continue to challenge us with present-day technology, and whether the toughest of these problems (e.g., traveling salesperson) will be made tractable by quantum computing or by new technologies mimicking the analog/digital mechanisms of the brain.
The history of how the digital idea took over to become the lifeblood of our civilization is impressive, but picturing where this revolutionary idea may take us in the years and decades to come is breathtaking.
December 19, 2019
Well done
An incredible journey from vacuum tubes to quantum computing with a stop over for NP-Complete problems, which made my little data scientist heart go pitter pat. If you enjoy computers, their history, how they work, and why they evolved as they did, then I highly recommend this book.
An incredible journey from vacuum tubes to quantum computing with a stop over for NP-Complete problems, which made my little data scientist heart go pitter pat. If you enjoy computers, their history, how they work, and why they evolved as they did, then I highly recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews