Showing results for "The Pocket" in Computers & Technology

What shapes our sense of place, our sense of time, and our memory? How is technology changing the way we make sense of the world and of ourselves? Our screens offer us connection, especially now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are certain depths of connection our screens can’t...

Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. Keith Houston transports listeners from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators.