That “famous scientist” was a Hungarian émigré mathematician called John von Neumann, and the electronic machine he was developing at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) was, of course, the computer, the central product of today’s networked society. And it’s this story, of von Neumann’s attempt to assemble a team of the world’s most brilliant 20th-century scientists at IAS, that forms the central narrative in this sparkling new book by one of America’s most talented historians of technology. (via “Turing’s Cathedral”: Gods of the digital universe – Nonfiction – Salon.com)