• Understanding the Digital World
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Understanding the Digital World

$45.00
$45.00 $45.00
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The popular introductory textbook that explains how computer hardware, software, and networks work—now fully updated for today’s fast-changing digital ageUnderstanding the Digital World has establi...
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  • 12 January 2027
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The popular introductory textbook that explains how computer hardware, software, and networks work—now fully updated for today’s fast-changing digital age

Understanding the Digital World has established itself as the essential computer science textbook for nonmajors and a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about computers and communications. It explains how computers are built and how they compute, what programming is, how the Internet and the web work, Python programming, AI and machine learning, the inherent limitations of computers, and much more. Now completely updated, this informative and accessible book covers all facets of the digital world, revealing how computers affect security, privacy, property, and many other vital social, political, and economic issues.

  • Now covers large language models and chatbots like ChatGPT
  • Features timely new discussions of how LLMs are changing how we live and work, including how the use of AI is transforming programming itself
  • Gives updated examples of new technologies like self-driving cars and how they affect us
  • Provides added coverage of data breaches, facial recognition and biometrics, tracking, and other privacy issues
  • Offers expanded coverage of hardware like multiple cores and GPUs
  • Additional historical discussions cover topics such as Leibniz’s work on binary numbers
  • Includes suggestions for further reading and a glossary of technical terms and buzzwords
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Price: $45.00
Pages: 312
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 12 January 2027
ISBN: 9780691288871
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

COMPUTERS / Internet / General, Internet: general works, COMPUTERS / Internet / Online Safety & Privacy, COMPUTERS / Security / General, COMPUTERS / General, Computing and Information Technology, Computer security, Online safety and behaviour
"“[Kernighan's] credentials as a computer scientist are stellar but what comes through in this book is a humanitarian concern about the place of technology in the modern world. . . . The grounding [the book] provides in the fundamentals of computing and how the technology interacts with our lives will remain relevant for a very long time.”—Steve Mansfield-Devine, Network Security"
Brian W. Kernighan is professor of computer science at Princeton University. His many books include Millions, Billions, Zillions: Defending Yourself in a World of Too Many Numbers (Princeton) and The C Programming Language.