Bootstrapping Computing

Preorder — ships March 31, 2025.

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You probably know that computers use binary to do all of their processing. But how? How does everything we do — write code, click buttons, browse the web — boil down to binary? What are the layers in between? And how did we create the upper layers out of the lower layers when they didn’t exist yet?

Bootstrapping Computing is a short, technical book for curious, non-technical people, exploring how we built modern computing out of simpler parts. We will cover each step, and how it was built out of the last one. We will take a few detours here and there to answer some questions you might have about computers, such as: Why can’t computers produce truly random numbers? How does a new programming language come to be — when it didn’t exist before? How did Tim Berners-Lee “invent” the World Wide Web? How does internet traffic get all the way across the ocean without any errors in the data transmitted?

We’ll also touch on some of the insights required to make the more difficult jumps as we travel up the stack, as well as the people who brought them to the fore.

Our books are archival quality, and individually made by hand in Tennessee. If well-cared-for, they will last generations.

Cover: Hard case (2.5 mm high-density boards) wrapped in smoke grey book cloth
Pages: Pigment-based ink (full color) on 80 lb warm white paper sewn with accented linen thread, 112 pages
Dimensions: 18 cm × 21.5 cm × 1.8 cm

Some specs and designs may change slightly before release.