Before Apple, before Google, there was Bell Labs, font of one brilliant invention after another. With a novelist's eye for vivid details and juicy character sketches, Jon Gertner chronicles five decades in an eccentric world where having a Ph.D in an esoteric field was merely the ticket to entry, and Nobelists sprouted like dandelions. A vision of America's innovative Golden Age, and an inspiration to fresh ambitions of genius.

Noted techno-savant Julian Dibbell assembles potent, persuasive, and sometimes peculiar pieces from a wide range of contributors who explore, ponder, and illuminate the way our lives intersect the cybersphere and gadgetzone.