When I was young, I happened upon a book called "The New Way Things Work," by David Macaulay. It described hundreds of household objects, along with descriptions and illustrations of how they work. (Well, a nuclear power plant, and the atoms within it, aren't household objects. But I digress.) It was really interesting!
I remember seeing someone here mention that they had read a similar book as a kid, and it helped them immensely in seeing the world from a reductionist viewpoint. I was wondering if anyone else had anything to say on the matter.
I have fond childhood memories of many hours tracing the circuit diagram of the adding circuit : ) God, I was so nerdy. I wanted to know how a computer worked and that book helped me avoid a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. Learning, in detail, how a specific logic circuit works really drove home how much I had yet to learn about the rest of the workings of a computer.
We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.
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