This is a somewhat popular book constructed from what appear to be magazine-type articles produced by the authors between 1983 and 1986.

Of the four authors, John Simon, founder of the Harvard University Information and Technology Newsletter, contributes chapters on the origin of microprocessors, the elements of computer logic, the development of the telephone and its transformation by the microprocessor and by satellites, xerography, computer typesetting, artificial intelligence, robotics, library automation, and distributed processing in teaching. Although they contain little hard information, these chapters make easy and pleasant reading. The potted histories are well done and present fairly accurate pictures within the limits imposed by their brevity. Some of the social commentary, for example, that dealing with the effects of “divestiture” on the telephone industry, is also worth reading.

Madeleine Butler, a media specialist, contributes a conspicuously well-written chapter on the video disk and its potential for information storage and dissemination. Her account of an interactive system for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation is particularly interesting.

John Simon and George Stalker describe problems of computer graphics and particularly of the methods that have been devised to represent continuous structures on the essentially discontinuous medium of the CRT.

Donald Bradshaw, a retired business executive, has a two-page coda to Simon’s chapter on artificial intelligence. The latter is a perceptive analysis of the development of AI over the years. It starts with the Turing suggestion of a possible way to recognize the presence (or absence) of intelligence via a terminal and, after a discussion of chess and other games programs which is now out-of-date, ends with expert systems.

This is a readable, if superficial book. It is well produced and is adequately illustrated with line diagrams.