Computer Science Books

I've been waiting for more than 2 months to get this book. Finally I got it from amazon a few days after the book released.

I have 8 NXT book, nothing is as details as Daniele's Book. The best NXT book so far.

There are 6 robots describes in this book. From the concept and then step-by-step assembly it and even the guide line to program it. So you not only able to build the robot, but also teach you how it works.

The cream-of-the-soup of this book of course is the JohnNXT ...... About 1/3 of the book focus on this great Robot. If you plan to build JohnNXT, this is the only book you need.

I'm really impressed with Daniele, I cant wait to the next book "Lego Rubik Utopy (LRU)".

Hi,

One of the better books at this moment for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotic set. This book is clearly written and despite the black and white images, the building instructions are also very clearly written.

This book is obviously written by people who know what they are doing and motivated to reach the highest standards.

After a short program in the Nxt-G programming language, they started to use the NXC programming language for the rest of the book. What makes this book so outstanding, everything is very well documented and everything is explained in great detail.

This is also an easy and pleasant to read book. And many times you find here what is missing in other books. For me, esspecially the introduction of NXC was very usefull. I wanted to use C for a long time, but I did not found the answers I was searching. This book takes its time to show you the mechanics behind th programming language. It teaches you clearly how to construct event tables and how you can visualise the design process, structuring your thaughts.

Also the walking models are very interesting. It gives you a clearly understanding about the problems of let a robot succesfully walk.

What I do missing is coverage of the acceleration, gyroscopic and compass sensors. It should be nice if those sensors also where covered in this book. But it is almost impossible to cover everything and an author has to draw a line.

The projects are well choosen and all very interesting. Personally Quasimodo I find the less interesting robot. While NXT AT-ST is in my opinion a very nice project to understand a walking robot. But I have to be honest, at this moment I am building the AT-ST robot. I did not have the time to build the other robots. Nevertheless, I took a quick look and i found the other projects also very impressive.

This book is a must have for every serious Lego Mindstorms NXT builder. You definatelly will refer back when building your own creations. I gave it five stars because it is well deserved.

Congratulations for the author and everybody worked behind the scenes of this book. A job very well done!

I wish you all very much reading and building pleasure. This book will surely touch your creativity and imagination.

Friendly greetings,

Bad_Wolf

I bought this book for my grandson's 11th birthday. He is thrilled with the book and is trying to learn the code. We thought the program for each robot was available to just download from the internet, but we couldn't find such an easy method. He will have to type in the code from the book himself which will help in the learning process. At this point in time, though, this programming may be a bit too complex for him.

I have been waiting for this book even before it was wrtitten because I have wanted to build JohnNXT5 ever since I saw it posted on the Internet. This book is probably the best book so far for the Mindstorms NXT robotic system. I have purchased most of the books available for the NXT. I like Jim Kelly's books too, but this one has moved from wheels to robots that use tracks to get around and walk. It is well written and well illustrated even though the building instructions aren't in color. The author has a sense of humor as well as being well versed in the NXT system. I like the fact that he continues to refine and redevelop his creations and try to make them the best they can be. I hope to see more books from him, especially one covering the Rubic Cube solver. I congratulate the author for a job well done and highly recommend the book to all robotic nthusiasts.

If you're searching for some exciting NXT projects and ideas--or would simply like to build JohnNXT, a replica of the famous Johnny 5 robot--you will enjoy Daniele Benedettelli's book Creating Cool MINDSTORMS NXT Robots. The book presents helpful ideas that you can use in your own inventions and carefully integrates them in a variety of robots with detailed building instructions. In fact, these very features are why I've given the book five stars: challenging robot projects, excellent discussions of useful concepts and ideas, and exceptional building instructions.

Most of the robots seem intended for more advanced users looking for a challenge; in other words, these are generally more complex robots. For example, there are several walking robots--including three bipeds (two-legged robots), one of the most difficult types of robots to create. And with the exception of the massive, multi-NXT robot "JohnNXT" (chapter 8) and a remote control (chapter 9), you can build all the robots from the parts in a single retail LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set. All the programming in the book is done in NXC (Not eXactly C), an unofficial text-based language with a C-like syntax.

Along the way you'll find in-depth explanations of robotics concepts and helpful descriptions of the robots. Besides an entire "theory chapter" on building biped robots (chapter 1) and another such chapter on finite state machines (chapter 3), the robot chapters themselves include explanations of concepts such as hysteresis, writing a multitask program, and quadruped (four-legged) walking as well as information on the robots' functionality and history. The author also does a good job of presenting and explaining the programming. Although prior NXC experience is helpful, such experience is not required.

The BIs (building instructions) are outstanding, which is important since they are a major part of the book. The author used advanced BI techniques, including complete electrical cables and callouts, and Ldglite to render the images, creating BIs that are remarkably "LEGO-like." I found that the BIs were generally very easy to follow even though many of the steps were complex. Such clarity is invaluable for a book that is filled with building instructions.

I admit that I didn't build the famed JohnNXT robot. Why? For starters, I don't have all the necessary pieces! All the same, I'm glad to see that the author included the robot because a number of readers will want tackle this enormous project.

In conclusion, this book is ideal for you if you're a more experienced NXT user looking to broaden your robotic horizons--while having lots of fun. Nevertheless, even if you're new to the NXT set, you would still enjoy the book. Either way, after working through the projects and grasping the concepts, you should be well-equipped to create your very own cool NXT robots.

This is an excellent source. Would make a great text for a college course.

What is unique about Dr. Tanner's book is how well it captures the essence of complications related to online distance learning systems. It's not just about delivering information to students for purposes of learning. Clearly numerous challenges face both the student and the instructors as relates to learning in this format. I was particularly interested in the data presented concerning the trials faced by traditional professors in attempting to use this learning delivery process. Also as one who is reasonably computer literate I was surprised to find how many teachers (in her treatise the students) had difficulty with the online format because of lack of computer and online proficiency.

For anyone planning to participate in an online learning format, whether as student or instructor, this is a must read.

Dr. Tanner's treatment of the student in this setting is indeed "cutting edge". With the explosion of online courses to accomodate the increased educational requirements of teachers (M.Ed, etc.), it is absolutely critical to understand the challenges. What I found especially useful was Dr. Tanner's use of actual "work in the trenches" to buttress her premises.

I highly recommend this book for any organization (college, professor) that is considering starting an online program to accomodate non-traditional students or distance learners. It is better to learn from the research than to "reinvent" the wheel on your own. It is a pretty cheap investment in any meaningful educational program.

BTW, Shame on those cheating students.

Tanner's book provides intriguing controversy embedded in quality research. Beyond presenting common challenges to an online learning program, Tanner encountered an interesting situation of participants (teachers) caught cheating in the program. Although the hybrid (online and face-to-face) program was intended to help participants pass the Praxis II exam, the pressures they felt to succeed in a voluntary credentialing program lead them to subversively cooperate to the potential detriment of their own Praxis scores...ie: they cheated! Tanner is able to expose an interesting irony, in that these educators would not tolerate their own students cheating, yet they felt it necessary to do so themselves. Is this perhaps a telling fact about the pressures and "successes" of the No Child Left Behind and Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) mandates? Tanner cleverly manuevers around this situation by describing it as "atypical behavior" in order to protect the research subjects, and to maintain "political correctness" even in academia. Not only a useful resource for anyone planning to implement or improve a program of distance learning, but also a provocative read.

This book is a thorough research guide for educational researchers working in the field of technology and distance learning. A key important aspect that Tanner identifies is the very different educational needs of adult students. I would highly recommend this book as it was a great reference for my own research!

Very thought inspiring collection of essays that address the social and economic implications of technology. Not very light reading and not very heavy - somewhere in between. May help to have some very elementary economics background. Worth reading if you're interested in understanding what technology may do to capitalism and the workforce.

A great collection of essays for those looking to understand and begin their studies of the new technological/electronics revolution occuring in the productive forces of society and its resultant new class formations and alignments. A praise to Herr Marx!! The productive forces do take the lead and along with the deeper proletarianization and destitution of the masses(to the point of their labor becoming redundant) and the high level of technology and robotics in production, there is but only one way to go.

The book and modern application and interpretation of classical Marxist economics is excellent. It would have been helpful to have an Index as this text is excellent as a reference and the editors could have taken time to properly index pertinent topics (e.g. When value is created by labor p.75)

This collection of essays examines the historical and current role of technologies- never neutral, but always integral to a dominant class' agenda and planning masked as a reified objectivity - in partially determining the class struggle. Particularly, the ongoing telecommunications, "information" and robotics sectors introduce a qualitatively radical transformation of social relations by appropiating into capital the mind and soul of the workers, rendering us redundant just as the steam engine and electric motor technologies earlier rendered workers' bodies and physical power partially without value. The increasing genocide (for the workers at the low edge of the global hierarchy) and pauperization of various degrees for the rest by the corporate transnational state is made possible for the greedy rulers and technocrats by the degradation of the power of labor in the context of a society approaching total automation and terrabit-per-second panoptic global communications. The maintenance of coercive class relations through such contrived means as "intellectual property rights", the artificial scarcity and thought control induced by such media as cable tv and the dismantling of public services is turning more of us into a new Roman proletariat, with technology serving the role of ancient slaves in marginalizing our vital endeavors. Instead, we're force fed a sad circus of televised slaughters for our patriotic entertainment while the Reagans, Bushes, Clintons and Mc.Cains thank us "for serving". A worthy book which I found full of insights for aggessive resistance against the old masters now beaming in cyber cloth. To their new digital hype, we should be armed with essays like these- along with some physical ammunition, for certain- and give a convincing reply of Non Serviat.

Cutting Edge has considerably advanced my revolutionarly understanding. I intend to read parts of it again & again. My 10 rating should be applied only to parts of this collection of essays. The balance of the book I would rate a 5. I was particularly impressed with chapter 8, The Digital Advantage by Jim Davis & Michael Stack. Warning! Don't read this chapter before bed time. My brain was so stimulated, I had a hard time getting to sleep after I read it. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Great stuff! On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 20! The other chapters that got the a lot of yellow from my hilighter: Introduction, Robots & Capitalism, High-Tech Hype, The Digital Advantage, The Biotechnology Revolution, Structural Unemployment & the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism, The New Technological Imperative in Africa, and The Birth of a Modern Proletariat by one of my heroes, Nelson Peery. I strongly recommend this book to any thinking person!

I used the source code in this book when I implemented buddy system in my OS.
Bruno's code is very effective and the design is excellent too.
I've learned a lot of things in this book.
So, I'd like to recommend this book absolutely!

I think I said it all right there. Great for intermediate/advanced c++ users. It also contains sections on various algorithms which implement many of the data structures discussed in previous chapters. Just get the book already!

The book has a detailed introduction and explanation to the subject and clearly explains how to analyze and implement in programming. This is done all in C++ and it is suited to students in Computer Science Courses. The exercises at the end of the chapters are quite useful.

Believe the summary...this book is for 2nd and 3rd year post-secondary students. I am an experienced C++ programmer, but Grade 12 math isn't enough to cut through the explanations to get to the code, which I can understand perfectly well.

Who should buy this book? Students with a good grasp of basic calculus, who want a thoroughly academic treatment of algorithms in C++ in order to pass Computer Science.

Who should not? A C++ programmer that wants clear, effectively presented information on implementing standard algorithms and data structures in order to get their project done.

I'm of the Keep It Simple school of thought, and the practical theory and implementations in this book could have been presented much more effectively without the adademic bafflegab.

I am currently working on my calculus skills in my spare time, and as my familiarity with the mathematical notation grows, I may be able to put this book to good use. Untill then I wish I'd bought something else, programming doesn't need to be as dense as this book makes it.

This is a great book for one who has had a formal study of undergraduate Calculus/Algebra and a very good understanding of the C++ language. The book starts off with explaining the fundamentals that will be applied to measure the effectiveness of a piece of code, and is very helpful for those who wants to understand the basic theory applied in the later chapters. This books treats almost all the basic data structures and have been presented in a very simple non-profounding way, like keeping the class design and hiearchy the same throughout. All the data structures have been explained using the (easy to use) arrays as well as link-lists. This makes it easier for a novice to grasp the fundamentals and go on to implement more complex and effective data structures using link lists. Overall, I found this book extremely helpful in getting a sound footing on this topic.

This book makes a good technical companion to Kahn's historic treatment in 'The Code Breakers'. It covers the technology up through the advent of computers. Its treatment is technical, going into details about how an encryption technique is performed, and how it is attacked. This book is the first place where I've seen the Enigma machine described in enough detail to understand how it works (or they worked since there were many variations and many of them are discussed here), and how to actually build (or simulate) one. It's a big book, and I carried it around for months, sometimes just diving into a chapter or topic. I loved it.

This book is the best book I have found so far on mathematical cryptology. Although the author does a fairly sketchy treatment of DES and IDEA compared to some other books out there, I feel that he makes up for it by placing all of the most common cryptographic systems in the context of a coherent and rigorous mathematical framework. Many other cryptology books fail to tie all the various cryptographic methods together using the powerful tools of modern mathematics. Dr. Bauer's text however, leaves no question in the student's mind where all the techniques fit into the theoretical framework. The second half of the book is also a pleasant surprise: a very readable but mathematically rigorous explanation of cryptanalysis. The author presents a number of statistical methods of attack that are difficult to find all in one place in the open literature. Dr. Bauer does a thorough job of explaining and augments the theory with many examples. This thorough treatment of cryptanalysis distinguishes his book from many other books on cryptology. Many authors of cryptology books pay lip-service to Kerckhoff's maxim (Only a cryptanalyst can judge the security of a crypto system.) but few bring the student enough cryptanalytic knowledge to even begin to evaluate the crypto systems presented in their books. Dr. Bauer does an excellent job of balancing cryptography with cryptanalysis. I highly recommend this book for any serious student of Cryptology. It is a real gem.

I read this book in the original German (even though reading in German is still a labor for me), and the effort was amply rewarded. This book is a first course in cryptography, at the upper undergraduate or beginning graduate level. Its competition would be books like Denning's or Beker and Piper or Koblitz' series. Denning's book is still great and worth buying (and Ms. Denning is a wonderful, accomplished, and intelligent person), but Bauer is more modern and complete. Koblitz' books are all first rate, but Bauer stays on the task of cryptology much more exactly and usefully. This is the basis of an excellent course in several German universities, especially in Munich. If I taught another course purely on cryptography (and not as part of a larger math curriculum---where Koblitz' book is best), I would certainly use this as the text. However, even though this is best, I really think everyone should still buy, read, and treasure Ms. Denning's book, Cryptology, too. (A true classic is never actually superseded.) Buy Bauer. It is better than an existing classic. While I don't have the English version yet, and cannot, therefore, vouch for the quality of the translation, I think that Springer Verlag is such a reliable editor that we can both trust that the translation will be good before we even see it.

This is an amazing book, and relatively inexpensive; Springer-Verlag has done it again.

Rather than being a dry recitation of encryption and cryptanalysis schemes, Bauer provides a great deal of information about what actually goes wrong when one tries to construct a cipher that must be used under pressure by non-cryptologists, with plenty of historical examples to illustrate his points. And he discusses at some length the ways in which cryptanalysts can hope to unravel ciphers and codes too strong to be broken by standard methods. Much of what he has to say I had never seen in print before; some of it was brand new to me. Perhaps it helps that Bauer is German, and doesn't have to write with the uneasy feeling that NSA or MI-6 is looking over his shoulder at every line he writes. For example, his explanation of how Robert Murphy compromised an American cipher in WW II so badly that the Germans could read it easily is one that I think some American officials would probably still prefer not to have in print.

Despite comments by other reviewers and by Cryptologia, I think it requires a certain mathematical sophistication to absorb much of the material in this book. The math is not hard, but Bauer implicitly assumes a mathematical mindset and a familiarity with the terminology of pure mathematics that most college undergraduates don't have. So I wouldn't choose it as the primary text for a first course in cryptology, but I would certainly use it as a supplementary text. I know of no other book that contains so much material on the practical realities of cryptology.

The book is full of very good and interesting technical information. The part on cryptanalysis is rather new and informative. The history part is mostly taken from Khan's book (you'll find some pictures in both) so there is nothing really new in this area

____________________

This book is extremely well organized. It includes outlined summaries of techniques and products as well as detailed text. A refreshing emphasis on detailed implementation practices and case studies.

Scope includes analysis, design, Use Cases, Design patterns, and reuse.

Well-balanced, and easy to follow, this book is very well-written.

Based on years of real-world projects, it strikes a balance between no documentation and a bureaucratic paper trail. It introduces the concept of a workbook which groups documentation under the following headings: Requirements, Project Management, Analysis, User Interface Model, Design, Implementation, Testing and Appendix, with detailed traceability information. The section dedicated to User Interface Model is a welcome change, acknowledging what so many have concluded: that UI design is a formal part of the design process, seperate from system architecture design. It's a light on exactly how to evaluate interfaces effectiveness, for this I refer you to usability guru Jacob Nielsen's book "Usability Engineering" also available at Amazon I'm sure.

Notation draws from Booch and Rumbaugh. Lots of worked examples makes the first project using this book a pleasure, and following projects even easier. Thoroughly recommended.

The project management process described in this book iscentered around defining and producing a set of deliverables (WorkProducts) and has the following characteristics: · Focuses on Work Products organized into a logical repository known as a Work Book. Each Work Product is concisely defined in the text as to its content, structure, purpose, value and traceability (relationship to other Work Products). The list of Work Products is adaptable according to project needs and extensible in terms of defining additional WPs. The authors define WPs in terms of Objects in the Policy Management domain and present a class-definition style view of their properties and relationships. END

This book is simple for the beginner and covers some advanced concepts for not the beginner. Overall a must read for a serious OO programmer/designer. I recommend reading this book as a first or second book on OO design. The case study is great.

I found this book to be very thorough and well-written. It strongly emphasizes a separation between analysis and design, and describes every possible work product I can think of in an OO project. One small criticism is that the coverage of Use-cases is fairly weak (Scenarios should probably be requirements work products rather than analysis).

Anyone who is new to Visual Basic 4.0 or those who are migrating / upgrading from Visual Basic 3.0 to Visual Basic 4.0 , will find this book as the basic tool to Object-Oriented approach in Visual Basic. Author has given some good ideas to tackle class hierarchy , not supported by VB. This is a must buy for all Visual Basic 4.0 learners who want to develop Business Objects in VB 4. But a serious developer who has already done programming in VB 4 may not find this book as very informative , for most of the subjects described may have been already done by him. (By the time I got this book I had already done a lot !) Hence , ABC learners must go for it but practical developers must use the experience they have

I was surprised to find the first half the book devoted to project and object design with very little code. Yet these sections turned out to be far more compelling than the (excellent) coding techniques that followed. I found the book an invaluable source for the more intangible side of programming: rather than teach dozens of techniques for coding yourself into misery, the author demonstrates how to design one's objects and applications correctly from the beginning. I can honestly say the book has saved me days, if not weeks, of effort by showing me how to design first and code later

If you are an experienced programmer looking to get into the Object Oriented side of VB, buy this book! Deborah Kurata and ZD have done an excellent job of laying the foundations of OO for you. All you have to do is read the book

Deborah Kurata has given the Visual Basic programming community something it has desperately needed for years -- a pragmatic framework for project development. In fact, any developer using one of the modern Interactive Development Environments (IDE's) will benefit from reading this book. Kurata skillfully combines a straightforward object-oriented methodology with practical examples of VB's new OO features. Every VB programmer (arguably every programmer of any language) should own this book

If you want to learn more about the entire design processes -- objected oriented design -- then read this book. You will not learn neat tricks in this book or even pick out a lot of Visual Basic code; however, you will learn how to better plan, schedule, and manage projects. Bottom line... if you must pick a book that will go beyond learning the language, and go into real-world project design... GET THIS BOOK

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available at: Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals, Oxford University Press. In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

This excellent circuits textbook is still available as follows:

Sergio Franco, Electric Circuits Fundamentals,
Oxford University Press, ISBN Number: 0195136136

In my opinion, this is one of the finest circuits textbooks for undergraduate electrical engineering students currently in print. Dr. Franco thoroughly and clearly covers the fundamentals of electric circuits. In addition, to provide students with physical picture as to how circuits work, he includes several interesting applications of circuits throughout the text. Dr. Franco thoroughly covers operational amplifiers, ac resonance, and complex frequency, subjects often slighted in newer texts on electric circuits fundamentals. The technical quality and writing style of this text are excellent. Finally, throughout the text there are essays/interviews on the electrical engineering profession; these will be helpful to students who are unsure about the electrical engineering profession as a career.

It's a rare book that has the academic rigor to explore our electronic culture and the ways in which it rewires our own brains and perceptions. It's an even rarer one that is free of jargon and cant, with gripping prose that makes you turn the pages as if you were under a beach umbrella. This is that book.

Computers, today, play a central role in all the facets of our existence. In work, in play, in our communications with others, and in our connection to the world of information we meet and rely on computers. Ted Friedman, a Professor at Georgia State University, has written a first rate analysis of the cultural and scientific forces that led to current status of computers in our lives. Friedman, in Electric Dreams - Computers In American Culture, discusses the social and political forces which led to the development of the personal computer and its uses. Friedman argues that technological invention does not inevitably determine how that technology will be used in the future. Rather, the evolving culture and
the political, scientific and business decisions it spawns can lead to very different applications of technology than what might have been predicted from the perspective of technological determinism at the stage of each new development. The cyberculture we live in can become a "cybertopia" resulting in "...a more just, egalitarian, democratic, creative society if we are willing to "...fight for it. The future is up to us." Electric Dreams is exciting and provocative and well worth the read for anyone who cares about the future uses of technology and the world it can bring.

Electric Dreams bridges the too-often-wide gap between the academy and the community with a readable and informative style that presents ideas and arguments in a refeshingly clear and concise manner. Computers have impacted U.S culture as profoundly as any technology in our history and, equally important, as Friedman suggests, we cannot separate computers from visions of our future -- utopian or not. This reader offers only one recommendation: Updated versions of the book might include a glossary and chronology to further enhance accessiblity for non-experts.

This is the first book I have read that "demystifies and recuperates" my own personal relationship with the computer, and my very visible and corporate relationship with it. Electric Dreams is designed in a way that communicates what needs to be known about the computer, particularly its ancestral descent. The many levels of historical context Friedman provides help to track the evolution of the computer by identifying its various transformations within the repetition of cultural conflicts that arose (and continue to surface) as a result of the its introduction and proliferation.
Friedman also suggests thoughtful ways to assess this knowledge by using a cultural studies approach that overlaps into historiography, cinema studies, literary studies, and postmodernism. Equally important to my understanding is Friedman's focus on the representation process that is linked to four other processes that make up the "Circuit of Culture" loop- production, consumption, regulation, and identity. The focus on representation pushes me to think semiotically about the mimetic (or not) qualities of analog loads and digital loads and how these two very different ways of representing information are susceptible to lesser or greater possibilities for alternate representations.
For example, the analog-based device seems to share a closer relationship to the thing it represents (sound to vinyl recording), whereas digital representation transforms the object into a collection of digits that is "other" than the thing represented. If the digital format, in this era's computer culture provides greater opportunities for consumers and producers to transform or reproduce the object that was digitized, what do we gain from such creative agency? And what kind of dystopia are we setting ourselves up for when the digitized re-arrangement of the referent can be executed so easily in the privacy (we think) of our own homes?
Electric Dreams carves out a place where we can explore some of the questions we have about this computer culture we inhabit, and the contradictory processes we have identified during our hands-on relationships with the computer products that emerged (and continue to emerge) from this technology. Thanks to this book I feel better equipped to examine the cultural space that exists both inside and outside the capitalist processes of commodification and more capable of distinguishing between a computer culture that is good for us and one that is evil.

Electric Dreams by Ted Friedman succeeds in illuminating what computers could have been and what they are in our lives. Friedman manages to inspire us to think about a better world --- more creative, more just, more fun --- aided by computers. It's a fun book to read and inspires the mind to wonder about what might have been and still could be. It should be read by any one who communicates by e-mail, buys stuff on line, searches the web; uses computers on the job. In fact, anyone curious about how this all happened and where it will lead.

This is a good book. It's the only book about wireless technology I've seen that actually takes the health effects of cellphones seriously. In addition to how mobile technology works and what it can do, the author devotes an entire chapter to the health problems, and comes down firmly "on the fence". He definitely thinks there's something to the fears (even though he's enthusiastic about the technology, as is clear from the rest of the book) and I agree with him.

If you are a marketing, business development, sales, or finance professional transitioning to the wireless field, this is the book for you. Mr. Dornan covers the topics in sufficient depth to make you knowledgeable without burying you in technical detail and equations. I've bought many books about technology and most are too technical so I lose interest. I am nearly finished with this book and it has be very valuable in the work I do. I would recommend it very highly.

I started reading it on Saturday and couldn't put it down, I was done by Tuesday. Sure the book has some spelling and gramatical errors (My Theory is that the editiors were put to sleep by it) but it talks about everything from the phones themselves, to wireless infrasturcuture, the building of a cell site, and commerence on Mobile Phones. It is really great for any techie that wants to know about phones, and even some who don't consider themselves techies. I enjoyed it quite a bit A+!

I really got tired of not understanding wireless tech talk: G3 networks etc. I also wanted to understand why my cell phone kept fading in and out and dropping calls as I drove certain routes. So I bought this book and read it. The book does a good job of explaining in easy to understand terms the technology. The big revelation or understanding point to me was that EVERYTHING wireless is analogous to the radio, with broadcast points (cell towers) and receivers (cell phones). The difference is one of frequency. I finally got the analog vs. digital concept that eluded me for so long for some reason. While attempting to do justice to all major wireless regions of the world, US, Asia (Japan) and Europe I found the British author biased to his home turf. Which is expected and fine but I wanted something slightly more balanced. Towards the end I became a very selective skimmer and did not really finish the book, but I got out of it what I wanted.

Unlike alot of other books out there, the title of this book is right on the money when it comes to the content of the book. This book IS an essential guide to wireless communications. Like many other people out there, I often read the online articles and technical editorials of Mr. Dornan (do a web search, they are great reading too!). So I thought I could not go wrong with his book. I was right. Starting with a bit of a history lesson, the author takes you through current 2/2.5G cellular and then hits the ground running. He doesn't stop until he has covered 3G, wireless LANs, messaging, WAP, wireless e-commerce, security, fixed wireless (WLL) and satellite technology. Mr. Dornan has a great writing style and throughly knows his material. So, no matter what your knowledge level, the read always has a light and easy feel to it and is still able to communicate a ton of relivant information to you. If you need a good starting place on wireless communications or a refresher course, you won't find too many books better than this one.