What Just Happened, James Gleick
What Just Happened, James Gleick
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What Just Happened
A Chronicle from the Information Frontier

Author: James Gleick

Narrator: Dan Cashman

Unabridged: 10 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/28/2002


Synopsis

Here’s some of what just happened: Millions of ordinary, sensible people came into possession of computers. These machines had wondrous powers, yet made unexpected demands on their owners. Telephones broke free of the chains that had shackled them to bedside tables and office desks. No one was out of touch, or wanted to be out of touch. Instant communication became a birthright.

A new world, located no one knew exactly where, came into being, called “virtual” or “online,” named “cyberspace” or “the Internet” or just “the network.” Manners and markets took on new shapes and guises.

As all this was happening, James Gleick, author of the groundbreaking Chaos, columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and—very briefly—an Internet entrepreneur, emerged as one of our most astute guides to this new world. His dispatches—by turns passionate, bewildered, angry, and amazed—form an extraordinary chronicle. Gleick loves what the network makes possible, and he hates it. Software makers developed a strangely tolerant view of an ancient devil, the product defect. One company, at first a feisty upstart, seized control of the hidden gears and levers of the new economy. We wrestled with novel issues of privacy, anonymity, and disguise. We found that if the human species is evolving a sort of global brain, it’s susceptible to new forms of hysteria and multiple-personality disorder.

What Just Happened is at once a remarkable portrait of a world in the throes of transformation and a prescient guide to the transformation still to come.

About The Author

James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and technology, the bestselling author of Chaos: Making a New Science, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. His books have been translated into 30 languages.Dan Cashman was born in 1933. He is an American television actor who has narrated fourteen audiobooks for Books on Tape, including titles like Murdering Mr. Lincoln. Cashman has appeared on such television shows as Dangerous Women, Silk Stalkings, and The Pretender.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris

If your house is anything like mine it is filled with the detritus of the last couple of decades of evolving technology. What to do with all these cables, power adapters, disks and old handhelds now? Just imagine how much of this stuff sits in landfills. If you've been along for the ride, this book......more

Readable retrospective on the nineties in technology It's usually a good sign when picking up a collection of essays to find that they have been previously published in some noted periodical such as The New Yorker or Harper's or in this case (with one exception) from The New York Times Magazine. Glei......more

Goodreads review by Özgür

"When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive."......more

I love books that make me question my understanding of things. For example, how does one quantify or qualify the difference between information and meaning. Does more information suggest more meaning? "All colors agree in the dark". James hammers down the bits that led to our evolution of language a......more

Goodreads review by Dean

An entertaining read in that it is about the dawn of the internet age with articles as early as 1992 and published in 2002. A bit like going back in time to a less hectic era. By the end of the book you can feel the wright of the last two decades crushing in.......more


Quotes

“A marvellous journey around our technology-drenched world ... The work of a master.” –The Independent

“Gleick’s a crack investigator who digs for the exceptional facts…. A worthy overview…on the brave new problems we’ve faced—and will face into the future.” –Detroit Free Press

“Invokes nostalgia for a simpler, more innocent time, before we took all this technology for granted.” –The Rocky Mountain News

What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past—one that, not long ago, seemed fairly far-fetched.” –Columbus Dispatch

“Gleick is a writer blessed with a techie’s mind and insight. . . . As we further immerse ourselves into a plugged-in world, it would be wise to listen to what Glieck had to say back when.” —Book Street USA

"Gleick is the king of popular science writing." —Irish Times

"Gleick is one of America's leading exegete of the technological revolution that, like it or not, is taking over all our lives. He spends his at the cutting edge of computer and allied sciences, returning from the front with visions of the future." —The Observer

“Gleick’s essays remain pertinent.” —The New York Times Book Review

“James Gleick . . . is on the outer reaches of the electronic frontier . . . and [he] has mastered it.” —The Roanoke Times

What Just Happened is a lively time capsule that examines the recent past— one that, not long ago, seemed mostly far-fetched.” —The Columbus Dispatch