Living with Computers

James W. Cortada is a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. in modern history and worked at IBM in various sales, consulting, management, and executive positions for 38 years, including in IBM’s management research institute, The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). There, he led and participated in over three dozen global studies on the use of information and business managerial practices. He is also the author of over a dozen books on the management of business, information technologies, and management. He also authored nearly two dozen books on the history of information technology, its business practices and industry, and about knowledge management. These include the Springer title From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking: Online Scrutiny in America, 1990-2015 (with William Aspray). His articles on the history of information have appeared in many of the “journals of record” for each topic he has studied, including Information and Culture, Library and Information History, Business History Review, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Enterprise and Society, and Technology and Culture, among others. He serves on the editorial boards of Information and Culture, Library and Information History, and IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

• Introduction: Why Listen to Me? Why You Should Take Seriously Your Own Knowledge of Computers.- What Is Computing?.- How Did We Get Here?.- Early Views of Computing.- How People View Computing Today.- How We Might See the End of the Information Age.- Life in a Post-Information Era.- Is It the End of Our World? How to Think About Implications and Challenges.- How to Live with Computers.

“Living with Computers covers a lot of ground in just over 100 pages. … I did find the book engaging. For those looking for a short overview of some of the main issues on the future of computing and AI this book would be of interest.” (Adam John Andreotta, Metascience, January 21, 2021)