“Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983″ by Severo M. Ornstein

Just finished reading “Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983“.

It is quite a candid and interesting book about the history of computing. It does not try to be comprehensive, and is more a biography of one of the persons who was involved in many of the early developments of computing. It is in no way a technical book, and it is read fairly easy. Quite nice as an antidote to the often written oversimplifications about who invented this or that.

“La sombra del viento” (”The Shadow of the Wind”) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I just finished the book “La sombra del viento” (”The Shadow of the Wind”) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This is a novel that has managed to sell around 10 million copies, I think. Quite amazing!

The book is quite nice and the story is gripping, though I guess it won’t get him the Literature Nobel Prize. You shouldn’t have much difficulty in finding it, or you can always get it at Amazon.

But what I found quite amazing is that while I was reading it, most of the people I talked to about it didn’t know the author (I have to confess that I didn’t know him either before starting the book). How come we have an author that manages to sell 10 million copies of a book and gets comparatively so little attention in the media? Comparatively with sportsmen, for example. I always find incredible how much attention the news devote to sportsmen, in particular football players… it is just amazing: they even show us every day how they are training, how they travel to a new city, and all sorts of silly stuff like that!! Why does our culture value so much football and so little so many other professions that really make a difference? When was the last time you saw on TV news the work of a doctor, a scientist, a writer ….?

Anyway… the book is nice. Read the reviews at Amazon, turn off the TV and have a go at it!

“The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman

Yesterday it was a local holiday, so I managed to finish the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman.

Well, thousands of pages are devoted to this book, so everybody has probably heard about it already… The book deals with globalization, and at times it is interesting reading, but overall I don’t think I would recommend it. Basically my main criticisms are: the book is too long, at around 635 pages with a small font; the view is too American centered; it has way too many anecdotical evidence, long e-mail excerpts, etc., and one has the impression that the same ideas are repeated over and over.

I was about to put it down quite a number of times, but at least it was good that I didn’t, since I found the latest chapters the most interesting ones (the ones that deal with moral issues of globalization, the negative aspects of globalization, etc.). The first chapters spend too much time discussing the incredible feats that you can do thanks to globalization, and this is perhaps more interesting for other people, but for people like me, who basically every day communicate with people around the globe, make use of the so-called Web 2.0, etc. it comes as not very new information (some obviously does, but I guess is not something as striking as to find nearly 500 pages of it amusing).

I think if the book was a bit more concise and if it had more data, and not so many opinions, it could have been more valuable…