<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: a great motivator for any IT person out there
Review: After buying the book I was a little scaptic about this book keeping me intrested but rather than being too technical and 'professional' the book is more like a drama with alot of winners and losers.It was a great inspiring experience-reading stories like the ones about bill gates,steve jobs and his body 'woz'.The book floats along the evolution of the computer industry,the IBM empire,the Microsoft phenomenen throght the stories of the people who made it and those who couldn't stay in the top.A must read for every person who has some computer background who wants to know how it all started and also for the not-yet computer fan who just wants a good read.
Rating:
Summary: History from newspapers
Review: Buyers beware!!! This book is huge... Amazon should give its dimensions, but I am guessing more than a foot long and 3/4 foot wide. Great reading about history -- if you have strong arms and a sturdy table.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best contrast of invention vs marketing.
Review: If you thought the TNT "Pirates of Silicon Valley" was good, this expounds so much the TV show left out. This story held me spellbound as it encompassed the whole history of the modern computer. It starts with a young college professor who dwells on the binary numbers taught to him by his mother. He makes a drum with paper capacitors that when spun, the drum would charge the paper and he could perform calculations. You will understand why Bill Gates is a billionaire - he is probably one the most ruthless & resourceful people ever. Learn how his unkempt appearance is part of his strategy to destroy his competitors. The whole book read like a mystery novel. Anyone in the IT world will realize that they only had a few pieces of the story - this book fills in the blanks. The insights of the author are amazing. I've read hundreds of books - this is the best secular book I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best contrast of invention vs marketing.
Review: If you thought the TNT "Pirates of Silicon Valley" was good, this expounds so much the TV show left out. This story held me spellbound as it encompassed the whole history of the modern computer. It starts with a young college professor who dwells on the binary numbers taught to him by his mother. He makes a drum with paper capacitors that when spun, the drum would charge the paper and he could perform calculations. You will understand why Bill Gates is a billionaire - he is probably one the most ruthless & resourceful people ever. Learn how his unkempt appearance is part of his strategy to destroy his competitors. The whole book read like a mystery novel. Anyone in the IT world will realize that they only had a few pieces of the story - this book fills in the blanks. The insights of the author are amazing. I've read hundreds of books - this is the best secular book I've ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Enthralling Chronicle of the Journey to the Digital Age
Review: In the tradition of the international bestseller FORBES Greatest Business Stories of All Time, this new, authoritative book from Forbes tells a compelling series of business tales -- this time focusing on the rapid-fire technology frontier. In stories filled with human drama and high-tech excitement, FORBES Greatest Technology Stories takes you inside today's Digital Age business empires and introduces you to the dreamers and schemers, visionaries and moguls, and entrepreneurs and inventors who built them. The past half century has been a time of unparalleled technological innovation. The sheer power and mobility that technology has made available to millions of people around the world today surpasses anything we could have dreamed of even fifty years ago. Most historians of the high-tech revolution tend to focus on the exploits of men and women of scientific genius, invoking names such as Lovelace, Babbage, Turing, von Nueman, and Cray. But, as Forbes contributing editor Jeffrey Young shows in his fascinating account, while science may have provided the fuel, business was the engine that drove the epic shift from the Machine Age to the Digital Age. Beginning in 1937, with the invention of the first crude electronic calculator by a renegade physics professor at the University of Iowa, and culminating with the Internet Wars of 1998, Jeffrey Young chronicles six decades of unbridled technological innovation and business genius. Writing in a crisp, fast-paced journalistic style, he whisks readers from the Truman-era engineering labs of MIT to the virtual reaches of cyberspace, from the "wirehead" garages of Silicon Valley to the boardrooms of Microsoft, pausing along the way to demystify the technological innovations involved and the roles they played in the high-tech revolution. And he provides compelling portraits of entrepreneurs and inventors such as John Vincent Atanasoff, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Craig McCaw, as well as the little-known investors, audacious also-rans, and magnificent failures whose pioneering efforts gave birth to the Digital Age. An enthralling account of the high-tech revolution as seen from a business perspective, FORBES Greatest Technology Stories is must reading for every business professional. JEFFREY YOUNG is a contributing editor and a business technology reporter for Forbes, Forbes ASAP, and Forbes Digital Tool. He is also the author of Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward.
Rating:
Summary: Tales Well-Told
Review: These really are "stories" rather than commentaries. A born storyteller, Young presents what he calls "inspiring tales of the entrepreneurs and inventors who revolutionized modern business." They include the "pioneers and pirates" who developed the prototype for the first commercial computers as well as Thomas J. Watson, Jr., William Shockley, Jack Kilby, Jay Forrester, Edwin De Castro, Douglas Engelbart, Bob Noyce, Andy Grove, & Gordon Moore, Edward Roberts, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Don Estridge, Lew Eggbrecht, Bill Gates & Paul Allen, Tom Carter, Bill McGowan, Craig McCaw, Bob Taylor, Steve Case, and Marc Andreesen. Perhaps at least a few of these names are unfamiliar to you. That is one of the great benefits of this book: It introduces a "cast" of literally hundreds of different "characters", most of them probably unfamiliar to most readers. I was fascinated to learn how important their "roles" were...how significant the impact of their work has proven to be. For whom will this book be of greatest interest? Probably for those such as I who enjoy a story well-told, who have a keen interest in knowing more about various "entrepreneurs and inventors who revolutionized modern business", and who appreciate having what amounts to a frame-of-reference within which to understand current and future developments. Also, Young's book will suggest additional readings such as full-length biographies of the major "characters" in the "tales" he has told so well.
<< 1 >>
| 
