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Tomorrow's Technology and You: Introductory
Completely updated, Tomorrow’s Technology and You, Ninth Edition provides you with an understanding of information technology so you can successfully navigate change and advance into the future. Today we’re standing at the junction of three powerful and rapidly evolving technological computers, communications, and digital entertainment. Computer technology is showing up in everything from automobiles to home appliances to telephones to televisions, and the lines that separate these machines are fading. This digital convergence is rapidly€”and radically€”altering the world in which we live.
- GenresTextbooksTechnology
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
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October 4, 2009Textbook for a course I am teaching next semester
June 9, 2020
It's hard to know who this book is for. It covers things as simple as what is a web browser to a look at programming languages. The telescoping up and down between levels of granularity is a little confusing.
The writing itself is about magazine article quality. It's entertaining in small doses but hard to read straight through.
The writing itself is about magazine article quality. It's entertaining in small doses but hard to read straight through.
August 2, 2016
First a warning for Kindle readers: unless Amazon has fixed this issue, you need to know that the Kindle edition is not a digital version of the printed book that is on your syllabus. It is truly a different edition of the book and does not contain the same material. If you bought or rented the Kindle edition for a class, go check it right now and return it if you need to and purchase the print book instead.
Like everyone else, I bought this book because it was the required textbook for a college class. The book is really aimed at people who are new to the IT field or don't have a lot of technical depth. It's a good resource to bring those people up to speed, but more advanced readers will feel that it's too basic and the explanations can feel too basic or overexplained. I'm in the latter category and while I appreciated the content I usually found it a hard slog and basically skimmed it and used the index to find answers to quiz questions.
As others have noted, "Tomorrow's Technology" is at best an inaccurate description as "tomorrow's technology" is likely to be today's or even yesterday's before the book hits the press. The title was a poor, short-sighted choice.
However, this book does have value in that it is a useful survey of the history of IT and an introduction to the underpinnings of the internet services we use today. I found it to be well-written, and comprehensive. A lot of the material is dry, but the book is usually successful in making it interesting or at the least easy to read. The highlights and illustrations are useful and enhance the text. It's well-designed and aesthetically pleasing.
Now for the bad parts:
The chapters are too long.
There is too much depth when it comes to describing processes, and the processes used are very bureaucratic. Most modern IT companies make a point of using more lightweight processes that are effective and efficient. Readers should learn the material in the book, but should also be cautioned that the real world is different and they will need to adapt. The book should describe Agile, Kanban, and other modern approaches to development and testing.
It contains inaccuracies, archaic terms, and some plain oddities. Some of the terms that are correctly defined are not ones that most professionals actually use, such as webjacking. Using the terms the book teaches you may make you look foolish, so tread carefully and pick up the real jargon from experience in the real world.
Pro tip for IST 110 students: I found that the quiz time limit was long enough that I could take it while skimming the chapter, checking at the end of every section to see if there were a question about that section and answering it. I found this much more tolerable than actually reading the whole thing and then taking the quiz. Taking notes was entirely unnecessary. The answers are literally taken from the text of the book and do not require critical thinking.
Like everyone else, I bought this book because it was the required textbook for a college class. The book is really aimed at people who are new to the IT field or don't have a lot of technical depth. It's a good resource to bring those people up to speed, but more advanced readers will feel that it's too basic and the explanations can feel too basic or overexplained. I'm in the latter category and while I appreciated the content I usually found it a hard slog and basically skimmed it and used the index to find answers to quiz questions.
As others have noted, "Tomorrow's Technology" is at best an inaccurate description as "tomorrow's technology" is likely to be today's or even yesterday's before the book hits the press. The title was a poor, short-sighted choice.
However, this book does have value in that it is a useful survey of the history of IT and an introduction to the underpinnings of the internet services we use today. I found it to be well-written, and comprehensive. A lot of the material is dry, but the book is usually successful in making it interesting or at the least easy to read. The highlights and illustrations are useful and enhance the text. It's well-designed and aesthetically pleasing.
Now for the bad parts:
The chapters are too long.
There is too much depth when it comes to describing processes, and the processes used are very bureaucratic. Most modern IT companies make a point of using more lightweight processes that are effective and efficient. Readers should learn the material in the book, but should also be cautioned that the real world is different and they will need to adapt. The book should describe Agile, Kanban, and other modern approaches to development and testing.
It contains inaccuracies, archaic terms, and some plain oddities. Some of the terms that are correctly defined are not ones that most professionals actually use, such as webjacking. Using the terms the book teaches you may make you look foolish, so tread carefully and pick up the real jargon from experience in the real world.
Pro tip for IST 110 students: I found that the quiz time limit was long enough that I could take it while skimming the chapter, checking at the end of every section to see if there were a question about that section and answering it. I found this much more tolerable than actually reading the whole thing and then taking the quiz. Taking notes was entirely unnecessary. The answers are literally taken from the text of the book and do not require critical thinking.
February 20, 2016
Insightful, informative and compelling book for anybody interested in the origin of computer technology and the role of computers in our world, and what, more than likely, the future will hold for us as computer users. This was actually my daughter's textbook for one of her college classes. Fascinating reading.
January 8, 2009
reading this for my required computer class for my bachelor's. my professor thinks it's ridiculous, and it's already outdated. i got it for about $50 but they're charging over $100 at barnes & noble. what a waste.
November 2, 2010
A great book for learning from the start of the internet to now. The whole book is full of pictures to understand a subject better and its information is well given and entertaining. You will have a great knowledge about the internet and how computeres work.
May 13, 2008
For class. Ummm, it's really... elementary. And I'm not even that tech-savvy...
November 11, 2010
Its a good book telling you how technogly works.
April 25, 2011
Did any one has the End of Chapter Solutions?
especially for chapter 5 .. send it to this email please azmen2@yahoo.com
and oh yeah it's kinda good book :)
especially for chapter 5 .. send it to this email please azmen2@yahoo.com
and oh yeah it's kinda good book :)
December 14, 2011
good textbook for those who know nothing about computers, but dated.
December 12, 2013
Muahaha, I'm going to count this textbook in with my year's reading, because I certainly spent enough time with it. All in all, great textbook, plenty of interesting information included.
February 27, 2015
For a textbook this was surprisingly entertaining. the different sections in the book like the "how it works" and all the diagrams really broke up the chapters and made it easy to get through.
November 2, 2010
This book is based on how technology started, how technology works, and future technology.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews