Excerpt
Have your teachers ever called you lazy? If so, they were right (for once)! Have you ever called your teachers lazy (under your breath, of course)? Then you were right too!
That's because human beings are all lazy - and there's plenty of evidence to prove it:
* we've invented motor cars, to save us the effort of walking to the shops to buy food
* we've invented gas cookers, to save us the effort of making a fire to cook the food we've just bought
* we've even invented TV remote controls, to save us the effort of getting up to switch channels while were eating the food we've just cooked!
Ever since time began we humans have been thinking of things to make life easier for ourselves. Unfortunately, thinking is itself very hard work. So, what quickly became the top dream for we lazy humans? Machines that would do our thinking for us, of course!
FIRST computers weighed three tonnes and added two plus two - if you were lucky ...
NEXT along came the microchip and the first personal crashing computers ...
NOW smaller, faster, with massive massive memories, computers have taken over the world ... but they still crash!
This interactive guide gives you loads of dynamic data about gobsmacking games and rampaging robots, computer crooks and virtually everything on virtual reality. Find out how to surf the net, e-mail a mate ... and if computers really are cleverer than you!
Machines such as these have taken a long time to develop, but over the past few years they've made amazing progress - so amazing, that nowadays you can find them everywhere.
You've probably got a few of them at home. There's the sort you play games on, of course, but if you pull the video recorder and the washing machine to pieces you'll find some inside them too.
Have a look round your school as well. You'll almost certainly find a few of the most recent types of these machines dotted about. They're dead easy to spot: they've all got keyboards and screens, and the teachers are scared of them.
Yes, were talking about the computer! They're everywhere nowadays, doing hundreds and hundreds of our thinking jobs. In this book you'll discover just a selection of the jobs computers are doing for us.
But ... you'll also find out some of the jobs they're NOT doing, as well! Because, fantastic as they are, there's one way in which the computer is no different to every other human invention. They can stop working!
Cars sometimes break down. Gas cookers sometimes explode. TV remote controls sometimes get trodden on (usually when you're looking for them). And computers can go wrong. Like ...
Illustrations (c) Mike Phillips, 1999
* THE COMPUTER THAT lost a spacecraft ...
* THE COMPUTER THAT invited a 104 year-old lady to join a nursery school ...
* and THE COMPUTER THAT got itself arrested ...
So find out not only what computers can do, but also the sort of things that can happen when they go wrong.
That is, when they become 'crashing' computers!
Crashing Computers
GoodReads review quotes:
The funniest book about computer history ever :o) Was good inspiration for some of my school work, because is full of facts anyway and the jokes inside are still funny :o)
- Jana
A great book that gives insight into how computers work and how they are different to humans
- Mathijs
The most informative and comical book I've ever had
- Fareed
(c) Michael Coleman 2020