An introduction to computational thinking that traces a genealogy beginning centuries before the digital computer. A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation; eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, "computational thinking" has become part of the K-12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview, tracing a genealogy that begins centuries before digital computers and portraying computational thinking as pioneers of computing have described it. The authors explain that computational thinking (CT) is not a set of concepts for programming; it is a way of thinking that is honed through practice: the mental skills for designing computations to do jobs for us, and for explaining and interpreting the world as a complex of information processes. Mathematically trained experts (known as "computers") who performed complex calculations as teams engaged in CT long before electronic computers. The authors identify six dimensions of today's highly developed CT-methods, machines, computing education, software engineering, computational science, and design-and cover each in a chapter. Along the way, they debunk inflated claims for CT and computation while making clear the power of CT in all its complexity and multiplicity.

From the editors of the wildly successful Beyond Calculation comes another exploration of the overwhelming impact of computers on our future. This time, the essays focus on the human impact of computer technology and culture: how computers will affect the ways we teach, learn, communicate, relate to each other, and live in the coming decades. The contributors, representing the best of many fields, include Secretary of Defense William Perry on how computers will affect warfare; Brian Ferrin on technology and storytelling; Patti Maes on intelligent agents; Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann on the quality of information; Eliot Soloway on the impact of computers on education; and many more. Like Beyond Calculation, praised by the New York Times for its "astonishing intellectual reach," this sequel engages readers with some of the most compelling and important issues of our time.

From the editors of the wildly successful Beyond Calculation comes another exploration of the overwhelming impact of computers on our future. This time, the essays focus on the human impact of computer technology and culture: how computers will affect the ways we teach, learn, communicate, relate to each other, and live in the coming decades. The contributors, representing the best of many fields, include Secretary of Defense William Perry on how computers will affect warfare; Brian Ferrin on technology and storytelling; Patti Maes on intelligent agents; Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann on the quality of information; Eliot Soloway on the impact of computers on education; and many more. Like Beyond Calculation, praised by the New York Times for its "astonishing intellectual reach," this sequel engages readers with some of the most compelling and important issues of our time.

A new framework for understanding computing: a coherent set of principles spanning technologies, domains, algorithms, architectures, and designs. Computing is usually viewed as a technology field that advances at the breakneck speed of Moore's Law. If we turn away even for a moment, we might miss a game-changing technological breakthrough or an earthshaking theoretical development. This book takes a different perspective, presenting computing as a science governed by fundamental principles that span all technologies. Computer science is a science of information processes. We need a new language to describe the science, and in this book Peter Denning and Craig Martell offer the great principles framework as just such a language. This is a book about the whole of computing-its algorithms, architectures, and designs. Denning and Martell divide the great principles of computing into six categories: communication, computation, coordination, recollection, evaluation, and design. They begin with an introduction to computing, its history, its many interactions with other fields, its domains of practice, and the structure of the great principles framework. They go on to examine the great principles in different areas: information, machines, programming, computation, memory, parallelism, queueing, and design. Finally, they apply the great principles to networking, the Internet in particular. Great Principles of Computing will be essential reading for professionals in science and engineering fields with a "computational" branch, for practitioners in computing who want overviews of less familiar areas of computer science, and for non-computer science majors who want an accessible entry way to the field.

In March 1997, the Association for Computing Machinery celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the electronic computer. Computers are everywhere: in our cars, our homes, our supermarkets, at the office, and at the local hospital. But as the contributors to this volume make clear, the scientific, social and economic impact of computers is only now beginning to be felt. These sixteen invited essays on the future of computing take on a dazzling variety of topics, with opinions from such experts as Gordon Bell, Sherry Turkle, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Paul Abraham, Donald Norman, Franz Alt, and David Gelernter. This brilliantly eclectic collection will fascinate everybody with an interest in computers and where they are leading us.