Ebook: Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge

Recent books by James Gleick, Martin Gardner, and Benoit Mandelbrot have made the topics of Chaos theory and fractals an integral part of the terrain for the computer literate. They have shown the revolutionizing role of the visualization of complex mathematical data. Computers and the Imagination pushes the adventure one step further.

Pickover, a renowned science writer whose work has been featured in such diverse publications as ArtForum, OMNI, Scientific American, and Computers in Physics, examines the manifold ways in which visualization transforms how we both perceive and understand the world around us. Computers and the Imagination includes a range of topics from the how-to construction of artificial spider webs to pain-inducing patterns to computer-generated poetry. Along the way, Pickover paradoxically uses the computer—a machine—to gain new insights into the very origins of human creativity.