How we got here ...

... Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson – review | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... no other book about the beginnings of the digital age brings to life anything like so vividly or appreciatively the immense engineering difficulty of creating electronic logic for the first time; of creating originally, and without a template, the pattern of organisation which has since become absolutely routine, and been etched on silicon at ever smaller micron-distances in chip foundries.