Thomas S. Mullaney
Thomas S. Mullaney is a historian and professor known for his work on the history of technology, Chinese history, and the history of computing. He is a faculty member at Stanford University and has authored several books on these subjects.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. The Chinese Computer
History and Technology in the Chinese Typewriter Revolution
The Chinese Computer by Thomas S. Mullaney explores the intriguing journey of how the Chinese language adapted to the digital age. The book delves into the challenges of inputting a language with thousands of characters into a system designed for an alphabetic script. Mullaney traces the evolution of Chinese computing technology from post-World War II to modern times, highlighting the development of innovative input methods that allow Chinese characters to be typed using alphanumeric symbols. Through this narrative, readers meet a diverse group of individuals from various backgrounds who contributed to this technological advancement. The book also discusses how these innovations helped integrate non-Western languages into the global computing landscape, influencing both technology and culture.
The 17165th Greatest Book of All TimePurchase from Amazon -
2. Your Computer Is On Fire
Techno-utopianism is dead: Now is the time to pay attention to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking up to the large-scale consequences of Silicon Valley–led technophilia. This book trains a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases in our technological systems, showing how they are not just minor bugs to be patched, but part and parcel of ideas that assume technology can fix—and control—society.The essays in Your Computer Is on Fire interrogate how our human and computational infrastructures overlap, showing why technologies that centralize power tend to weaken democracy. These practices are often kept out of sight until it is too late to question the costs of how they shape society. From energy-hungry server farms to racist and sexist algorithms, the digital is always IRL, with everything that happens algorithmically or online influencing our offline lives as well. Each essay proposes paths for action to understand and solve technological problems that are often ignored or misunderstood.
