Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone by George Myerson, Icon/Totem,
拢3.99/$7.95, ISBN 1840462361
Turing and the Universal Machine by Jon Agar, Icon/Totem,
拢5.99/$9.95, ISBN 1840462507
HERE鈥橲 an alien perspective: review the hubbub surrounding mobile
communication by drawing on the writings of two leading 20th-century
philosophers. Surprisingly enough, both Martin Heidegger in Being and
Time (1927) and J眉rgen Habermas in The Theory of
Communicative Action (1981) claimed to redefine human communication. By
placing the hyped-up gospel of 21st-century mobile communications in this
broader context, George Myerson demonstrates very clearly what an impoverished
and diminishing concept of communication is now on offer.
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Myerson does offer a scrap of hope. We will recover a touch of what he calls
鈥渟till鈥� communication. This is a concept that dates back at least as far as that
Old Testament occasion when God spoke to Elijah the prophet in a still, small
voice. Politicians, media celebrities and electronic communication gurus, take
note. Listen, don鈥檛 just talk.
If more conventional history of technology is your cup of tea, try Jon Agar鈥檚
Turing and the Universal Machine. His excellent treatment includes not
only the computer, but also its precursors. Here you鈥檒l find the mechanical
engines built by Charles Babbage in the 1820s and 1830s; the Hollerith punched
card machines that sorted American census data (1890); the high-speed electronic
calculators and code breaking machines developed in the US and Britain during
the Second World War, as well as little-known advances such as Zuse鈥檚
programmable binary calculator for military aircraft design (Germany 1941).
The book revolves around Alan Turing, whose seminal ideas on computing
machines had a profound influence on both sides of the Atlantic. Highly
readable, of general interest and a useful introduction to the subject.