The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Financial, Telecommunications, Media, and Entertainment Industries

Cortada is ideally if not uniquely qualified to approach this important topic. ... This is an important attempt at synthesis, and Cortada is to be commended both for taking it on and for what he has managed to accomplish. The material is exhaustively researched and extensively footnoted. Charts and tables help to summarize the data, and the occasional photograph reminds us that technologies and business are not abstract concepts but are human activities. * Michael N. Geselowitz, Enterprise & Society *
Cortada is one of the premier-and most prolific-of computer historians and covers nooks and crannies that many others miss. Given the present centrality of computers in virtually everything, Cortada is becoming the recorder of a very important transformation in American (and most world) business. * Communication Booknotes Quarterly *
Cortada is ideally if not uniquely qualified to approach this important topic. ... This is an important attempt at synthesis, and Cortada is to be commended both for taking it on and for what he has managed to accomplish. The material is exhaustively researched and extensively footnoted. Charts and tables help to summarize the data, and the occasional photograph reminds us that technologies and business are not abstract concepts but are human activities. * Michael N. Geselowitz, Enterprise & Society *
Cortada is one of the premier-and most prolific-of computer historians and covers nooks and crannies that many others miss. Given the present centrality of computers in virtually everything, Cortada is becoming the recorder of a very important transformation in American (and most world) business. * Communication Booknotes QuarterlyI fully recommend this book. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to get a feel for how technology adoption interacts with development and for how decision-making and company-interaction patterns have fostered or hindered the introduction of computers in a particular application and at a particulsar time.Gerald Friedland,IEEE Annals of the History of Computing *