The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age

The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age: A historical, sociological and philosophical enquiry
by John Thornton
© Pearson Prentice Hall, February 2007, ISBN 9780733988486

"Thornton has taken on the hard intellectual task of providing new ways of explaining core issues. His analysis in reconnecting technology to human life through the scientific method is original and very necessary."
Peter McMahon, author of Global Control: Information technology and globilization since 1845

Front Cover                 Back Cover
Copyright                     Acknowledgements
Table of Contents       Introduction
Excerpt                        Index
Errata

How to Purchase:
For Academic Staff: Order an Instructor's Copy from Pearson Education Australia.
For Students and Members of the Public: Order a Copy Online from the Co-op Bookshop for $67.95 ($61.15 with student discount).

Supporting Website:
The book also serves as a core text for the Griffith University School of Information Technology first year subject The Foundations and Computing and Communication. You can access the website for this course HERE.

The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age is a book both for undergraduate computing students and for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of technology in the modern world. Dispensing with simplistic explanations, the book first considers the evolution of the computer from the origins of number to the development of the microprocessor. Along the way we meet the early pioneers of mechanical calculation, including Pascal and Leibniz, the groundbreaking work of Charles Babbage and his Difference Engines and the drama of the wartime code-breakers at Bletchley Park.

But this is not just a historical text. It provides an introduction to the theory of computation, showing how Alan Turing's concept of a universal Turing machine helped form the foundations of modern computer science. Theory then becomes practice as the book explores the von Neumann architecture and shows how simple switching circuits can be used to construct a general purpose computer.

The basic theme running throughout this discussion is that the foundations of computing and the information technology age lie in the scientific turn of mind taken by our entire civilisation. From this perspective, the book traces how information technology has restructured the economic and social life of the developed world and looks into the ultimate direction and purpose of this process of globalisation. The reader is then drawn to consider the philosophical implications of this scientific turn of mind and to examine how our materialistic understanding has ignored the underlying reality from which all technology emerges: human consciousness.

Finally, the book argues that this inability to acknowledge the reality of consciousness has caused modern civilisation to enter into an unbalanced pattern of development, where we increasingly understand ourselves as biological machines that must be adapted to the latest technology, rather than as the creative intelligence that technology was supposed to serve.

About the Author: John Thornton is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University's School of Information and Communication Technology. He has published extensively in the area of artificial intelligence, including articles in the Journal of Logic and Computation and the Journal of Automated Reasoning and numerous papers in the world's major artificial intelligence conferences, including the 2007 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence where he received a distinguished paper award.