Written by Steve Jobs Biographer Walter Isaacson this book takes a look at how we got to now in the computing world. Starting with Ada Lovelace and ending with the pair of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Isaacson covers dozens of the people that have enabled our world to be what it is today. He came to an non-intuitive result throughout his research, the lone inventor didn’t exist. He found that the most successful company or organization actually had a mixture of personalities and passions leading to success. His history is full of the men and women that made computing happen. Interestingly, it wasn’t until the 70’s and 80’s that women were no longer prominent in the history of computing. This is unfortunate as many of their contributions are still crucial to software development today. COBOL, subroutines, and most of the rules around software development were developed by women working either in the Navy or at some of the institutions that partnered with the military.

Much of this book was not new to me as I had read the history of Bell Labs and the history of Xerox PARC however a great deal of the book was news to me. He didn’t completely focus on the US even though a great deal of the history of computing took place here. He also explored the impact of the Germans, the British, and a bit of the Chinese.

If you’re a fan of computers and like the history of technology this book is definitely for you. Isaacson discusses the culture of the organizations that allowed technology to flourish (Intel) and the types of environments where it did not (Shockley Semiconductor). How no company created anything in a vacuum and that many ideas are, in fact, independently co-created.

Technology is a messy collaborative thing that could have been very different depending how just a few changes. Without collaboration, risk taking, and some big personalities we wouldn’t have the computers we have today.