基本信息·出版社：Vintage ·页码：320 页 ·出版日期：2003年06月 ·ISBN：0375713913 ·International Standard Book Number：0375713913 ·条形码：9 ...
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What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier |
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What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier |
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基本信息·出版社：Vintage
·页码：320 页
·出版日期：2003年06月
·ISBN：0375713913
·International Standard Book Number：0375713913
·条形码：9780375713910
·EAN：9780375713910
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·丛书名：Vintage
·外文书名：即时发生
内容简介 For the past decade change seemed to happen over night, every night. Fueled by the exponential rise of technology, the digital revolution was difficult for many to make sense of, but James Gleick watched and analyzed, criticized and commended, participated in and prophesized about the instantaneous transformations of the world as we knew it.
What Just Happened is a collection of Gleick’s articles from this equally exciting and terrifying decade—remember Y2K?—that range from condemnations of maddeningly pervasive bugs in Microsoft software to the invisible shackles we wear in an “Inescapably Connected” world. Combining insight and reason with wit and passion,
What Just Happened is an essential tour of our technology-driven mania.
作者简介 He worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for
The New York Times, founded an early Internet portal, the Pipeline, and wrote three previous books:
Chaos, Genius, and
Faster. His latest book
Isaac Newton is available from Pantheon. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York with his wife.
媒体推荐 “A marvellous journey around our technology-drenched world ... The work of a master.” –
The Independent
“Gleick’s a crack investigator who digs for the exceptional facts…. A worthy overview…on the brave new problems we’ve faced—and will face into the future.” –
Detroit Free Press
“Invokes nostalgia for a simpler, more innocent time, before we took all this technology for granted.” –
The Rocky Mountain News
“
What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past—one that, not long ago, seemed fairly far-fetched.” –
Columbus Dispatch
“Gleick is a writer blessed with a techie’s mind and insight. . . . As we further immerse ourselves into a plugged-in world, it would be wise to listen to what Glieck had to say back when.” —
Book Street USA
"Gleick is the king of popular science writing." —
Irish Times "Gleick is one of America's leading exegete of the technological revolution that, like it or not, is taking over all our lives. He spends his at the cutting edge of computer and allied sciences, returning from the front with visions of the future." —
The Observer
“Gleick’s essays remain pertinent.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“James Gleick . . . is on the outer reaches of the electronic frontier . . . and [he] has mastered it.” —
The Roanoke Times
“
What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past— one that, not long ago, seemed mostly far-fetched.” —
The Columbus Dispatch
专业书评 From the Back Cover“A marvellous journey around our technology-drenched world ... The work of a master.” –
The Independent
“Gleick’s a crack investigator who digs for the exceptional facts…. A worthy overview…on the brave new problems we’ve faced—and will face into the future.” –
Detroit Free Press
“Invokes nostalgia for a simpler, more innocent time, before we took all this technology for granted.” –
The Rocky Mountain News
“
What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past—one that, not long ago, seemed fairly far-fetched.” –
Columbus Dispatch
“Gleick is a writer blessed with a techie’s mind and insight. . . . As we further immerse ourselves into a plugged-in world, it would be wise to listen to what Glieck had to say back when.” —
Book Street USA
"Gleick is the king of popular science writing." —
Irish Times "Gleick is one of America's leading exegete of the technological revolution that, like it or not, is taking over all our lives. He spends his at the cutting edge of computer and allied sciences, returning from the front with visions of the future." —
The Observer
“Gleick’s essays remain pertinent.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“James Gleick . . . is on the outer reaches of the electronic frontier . . . and [he] has mastered it.” —
The Roanoke Times
“
What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past— one that, not long ago, seemed mostly far-fetched.” —
The Columbus Dispatch
文摘 CHASING BUGS IN THE ELECTRONIC VILLAGE
August 1992
I couldn't wait to buy Microsoft Word for Windows--rumored to be the new Cuisinart, Mack truck, and Swiss Army knife of word processing software, full-featured, powerful and, for a writer, the ultimate time-saving device. I was writing a long book, and I wanted the best. One day in January 1990, I finally got to tear open a software box bigger than some computers, and out it came. The world's preeminent software manufacturer had spent roughly as long developing this word processor as the Manhattan Project had spent cooking up the atomic bomb, but secrecy had not been quite as airtight. For more than a year, Microsoft had been leaking juicy tidbits to its waiting army of trade journalists, computer consultants, and corporate purchasers. Word for Windows (aka Winword or WfW) would be Wysiwyg (the standard acronym for What You See Is What You Get)--that is, it would display page layouts and typefaces with high fidelity to the final printed product. It would let users work with nine documents on the screen at once. It would have a macro language--a way to spend hours writing mini-programs to streamline all those little chores that can suck up milliseconds of a writer's time.
And it would also have--in some corner of my mind, I must already have known this--bugs.
Computer software is the brightest of bright spots on the American economic landscape, a consumer product evolving in a floodtide of innovation and ingenuity, an industry that has barely noticed the recession or seen any challenge from overseas. Bugs are its special curse. They are an ancient devil--the product defect--in a peculiarly exasperating modern dress. As software grows more complex and we come to rely on it more, the industry is discovering that bugs are more pervasive and more expensive than ever before. Word for Windows had big bugs and little bugs. A little bug might mean that a user would sometimes find the em dashes (—
……
