Premise

Remember the nerve-wracking wait, endless minutes that felt like hours, while the cassette tape spun in the Commodore 64's recorder, hoping that the game would load without errors? And the high-pitched, tinny sound of the 56k modem, a distorted song announcing the opening of a window onto the world, a world of text forums and low-resolution images, yet so incredibly vast and new? If you lived through those years, if you smelled the hot plastic coming from your ZX Spectrum after hours of programming, then you know what I'm talking about: the 1980s, the uncertain but bright dawn of an era that would rewrite the rules of the game, transforming our reality forever.

"Computing History" is not just a book, it is a journey back in time, a digital odyssey that starts from those pioneering domestic machines, from their rubberized keys and grainy pixels, to lead you through decades of innovation, silent revolutions and thunderous changes. Together we will relive the explosion of personal computers, when the four walls of the office opened up to the potential of every home desk. We will witness the birth of the Internet, a global web woven of bits and bytes, which has canceled distances and borders, connecting minds and hearts in a previously unthinkable way. We will hear the echo of the first "beeps" of mobile phones, cumbersome and expensive instruments that heralded the era of mobility and perpetual communication. And we will immerse ourselves in the overwhelming wave of smartphones, small magical objects that have concentrated computing power in our pockets that was unimaginable only a few years before.

But this book is not just an album of memories, a nostalgic celebration of the past. It is also a fascinating analysis of the present, an attempt to understand how we got here, what forces have shaped this digital world in which we live, breathe and move. We will explore the brilliant minds who charted this path, the brilliant insights, the eye-opening mistakes, and the titanic challenges they faced. We will understand how information technology, from a specialized tool, has become an invisible infrastructure, the connective tissue of our society, an unstoppable engine of progress.

And, like a lighthouse projected towards the horizon, "Storia Informatica" goes beyond the boundaries of the present, peering into the mists of the future, up to the threshold of 2030 and beyond. With a pinch of speculative vision, but anchored to the solid foundations of current trends, we will question ourselves about the technologies that will define the next decade, about the impact of increasingly pervasive artificial intelligence, about the promise and challenge of immersive virtual reality, about the new frontiers of biotechnology and quantum computing. We will address the crucial questions that await us: How will work change in the age of automation? What will be the ethical and social implications of an increasingly interconnected and intelligent world? How can we shape a digital future that is truly human-scale?

Get ready for an epic journey, an exciting exploration that will make you rediscover the roots of our digital age, help you navigate the complexities of the present and project you towards a future in continuous, dizzying evolution. "Computer History" is more than a book: it is a compass to orient yourself in the technological labyrinth of the 21st century, an invitation to understand, participate and shape the world of tomorrow, starting from the foundations laid by those pioneers of the 80s and their machines that seemed so simple, but which already contained the germ of an unprecedented revolution. Open this book and prepare to retrace the story that changed the world, and continues to be written every day.

Enzo Ricciardi

Cuneo 12/04/2025