Talking with Computers Explorations in the Science and Technology of Computing [Hardcover]

Lively essays exploring topics from digital logic and machine language to artificial intelligence and searching the World Wide Web.In this lively series of essays for students and general readers, Tom Dean explores interesting fundamental topics in computer science with the aim of showing how computers and computer programs work and how the various subfields of computer science are connected. Along the way, he conveys his fascination with computers and enthusiasm for working in a field that has changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. The accompanying website helps make the underlying computational ideas more concrete. There readers are invited to experiment with short programs written in several languages and to follow links to other online resources.In this lively series of essays for students and general readers, Tom Dean explores interesting fundamental topics in computer science with the aim of showing how computers and computer programs work and how the various subfields of computer science are connected. Along the way, he conveys his fascination with computers and enthusiasm for working in a field that has changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. The accompanying website helps make the underlying computational ideas more concrete. There readers are invited to experiment with short programs written in several languages and to follow links to other online resources.Thomas Dean explores a wide range of fundamental topics in computer science, from digital logic and machine language to artificial intelligence and the World Wide Web, explaining how computers and computer programs work and how the various subfields of computer science are interconnected. Dean touches on a number of questions including: How can a computer learn to recognize junk email? What happens when you click on a link in a browser? How can you program a robot to do two things at once? Are there limits to what computers can do? Dean encourages readers to experiment with shol3Ä