Understanding the digital world by Brian W. Kernighan

Kernighan is my favorite author. Recently I’ve finished his book on technology around us, Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security.

The author in his words at Q&A with Kernighan explains, who might be interested in reading this book and what they would get. Before starting to read this book, I was expecting two major things: smooth explanation of digital world around us, and introduction of new tech terms as well as simple explanation of terms I’ve been using. There are so many tech terms, abbreviations that are buzzing around — it is important that we know them and understand the context around them. Apart from that I wanted also to understand the level of technical detail maintained, as this book is intended for the people not necessarily having good technical background.

Organization of the content in this book is simple. It has three major parts: Hardware, Software and Communcations. With this content, Kernighan introduces the digital world right from the organization of computer hardware, through various levels of software, programming, Internet, the web as we see it today, to the security and privacy related problems we are facing. Necessary history, recent events and his own opinions made the text more interesting. During explanation, he draws a historical timeline till where we are right now — enjoyed the historical process of evolution. He introduces several legal concepts and tips on mitigating security and privacy related issues we are facing.

I’ve picked up some new tech terms to chase and got good context around some terms I already know. Felt like revising most of concepts learned in college. To be specific I’ve enjoyed the communications section, as I’ve found more new content than the other two sections. I would highly recommend it, if you wanted to know — with decent level of technical detail — how the digital world works the way it is.

Above all, as usual, I’ve enjoyed his writing.