Book Review: The Devouring Fungus - Tales of the Computer Age
Reviewed by W. Ritchie Benedict
The Devouring Fungus - Tales of the Computer Age by Karla Jennings, W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd.
One of the new myths of the late 20th century is that women are supposed to loathe computers (although perhaps not as much as they are supposed to loathe professional football and hockey). Therefore, some may consider it unusual for a book to be written by a woman about computers, except -er- she appears to be poking fun at that oh-so-serious attitude programmers often have.
It is well known there is such a thing as "urban legends" - these are stories someone swears once happened to a friend or a relative. What is not commonly known, until now that is, is that there is a veritable plethora of stories about the early days of computers.
For example, the term "bug" for a software problem is supposed to have originated when a moth got caught in a relay on a Mark 1 back in 1945. Ms. Jennings says the term goes much further back - at least to Thomas Edison in 1878. It is a wonder that the whole field now seems so conventional, considering the eccentric geniuses who developed it. They range from absent-minded Norbert Wiener, who walked around in a perpetual daze to Alan Turing (inventor of the famous test for determining whether a machine can think) - a tragic figure with severe sexual difficulties. Then there was John Von Neumann, who loved mathematical problems and games to such an extent that he once battled a five-year-old over who would be the first to play with some inter-locking building blocks.
The early days of cybernetics provide plenty of odd data. For example: Did you know that Helmut Hölzer built a fully electronic analog computer in Nazi Germany in 1941? Babbage, the very first computer engineer, was a victim of his own endless drive for perfection? Only 45 years ago, in 1947, degrees in computer science did not exist?
Jennings really shines when she gets on to the subject of modern day computer hackers and the wildly humorous errors people make when they purchase equipment. She cites the elderly gentleman who very carefully folded a floppy disk in half before he left the store, the man who kept getting Syntax Error over and over after a clerk told him he should type in RUN to get the system functioning, and found after half an hour of confusion that the person was typing: ARE YOU IN?
Then there is the fellow who, after being instructed to "press any key to continue," complained he couldn't find the "ANY" key on the computer. Each chapter is prefaced with a computer gag. I know these things do happen - I once attempted to get a file decompressing program through my modem when I was first learning about such things. After a month of total frustration in attempting to get it to function, I dialed back and downloaded a second program. As soon as I got it up on the screen, I read the words: "The first program has a manufacturer's defect - do not use!"
Then there is the notorious computer virus - something I feel fortunate not to have encountered personally. In the early days (the almost prehistoric time of 1970!), they were relatively friendly, albeit annoying. Today, they have turned into something downright nasty. One recent virus caused $96 million in lost computer time and in the efforts to remove it. It is fortunate Gorbachev and glasnost came along when they did as one shudders at what might have happened if the computers for Reagan's "Star Wars" plan had malfunctioned. Jennings relates a number of instances where computer glitches have caused disastrous errors in expensive government projects. A single missing character destroyed the Mariner 1 Venus probe.
The devouring fungus of the title not only refers to an all-consuming passion for computers, but also to an incident where a client of a major computer company' was inexplicably losing data from magnetic tapes. After much investigation, it was discovered that old tapes had been stored in a room where a mycologist had been experimenting with fungi. This was in a large repository inside a mountain - a cavern designed to withstand nuclear attack. A fungus had attacked the tape, hitched a ride to data central and transmitted itself onto the read-write heads.
This book is a fast moving and amusing look at the world of the hacker and computer dweeb (a word containing a good deal of meaning according to the glossary that concludes the text). It is ideal for the computer buff and for the average reader who needs a laugh in what is an increasingly grim and electronified world.