The Digital Hand (PDF)

The Digital Hand, Volume 2, is a historical survey of how computers and telecommunications have been deployed in over a dozen industries in the financial, telecommunications, media and entertainment sectors over the past half century. It is past of a sweeping three-volume description of how management in some forty industries embraced the computer and changed the American economy. Computers have fundamentally changed the nature of work in America. However it is difficult to grasp the full extent of these changes and their implications for the future of business. To begin the long process of understanding the effects of computing in American business, we need to know the history of how computers were first used, by whom and why. In this, the second volume of The Digital Hand, James W. Cortada combines detailed analysis with narrative history to provide a broad overview of computing's and telecomunications' role in over a dozen industries, ranging from Old Economy sectors like finance and publishing to New Economy sectors like digital photography and video games. He also devotes considerable attention to the rapidly changing media and entertainment industries which are now some of the most technologically advanced in the American economy. Beginning in 1950, when commercial applications of digital technology began to appear, Cortada examines the ways different industries adopted new technologies, as well as the ways their innovative applications influenced other industries and the US economy as a whole. He builds on the surveys presented in the first volume of the series, which examined sixteen manufacturing, process, transportation, wholesale and retail industries. In addition to this account, of computers' impact on industries, Cortada also demonstrates how industries themselves influenced the nature of digital technology. Managers, historians and others interested in the history of modern business will appreciate this historical analysis of digital technology's many roles and future possibilities in an wide array of industries. The Digital Hand provides a detailed picture of what the infrastructure of the Information Age really looks like and how we got there.