Description

By Jennifer K. Alexander

Reckoning with Matter is an essential book in an era obsessed with computing and rapidly losing sight of its mechanical heritage. Matthew Jones reveals the essential materiality and mechanicity of early computing machines, built by masterful craftsmen who put mathematical logic into mechanical terms as parts and linkages. Much of recent computing history has focused on computing logics and software rather than hardware. Yet materials did not, and do not, do what is logically expected of them: as Jones notes, computer chip designers cannot even now predict many characteristics of a working chip, sometimes even its heat and speed.

page: 76 – 77
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 36, Issue 1

SKU: 360107