Bits to Bitcoin: How Our Digital Stuff Works

An accessible guide to our digital infrastructure, explaining the basics of operating systems, networks, security, and other topics for the general reader.

Most of us feel at home in front of a computer; we own smartphones, tablets, and laptops; we look things up online and check social media to see what our friends are doing. But we may be a bit fuzzy about how any of this really works. In Bits to Bitcoin, Mark Stuart Day offers an accessible guide to our digital infrastructure, explaining the basics of operating systems, networks, security, and related topics for the general reader. He takes the reader from a single process to multiple processes that interact with each other; he explores processes that fail and processes that overcome failures; and he examines processes that attack each other or defend themselves against attacks.

Day tells us that steps are digital but ramps are analog; that computation is about "doing something with stuff" and that both the "stuff" and the "doing" can be digital. He explains timesharing, deadlock, and thrashing; virtual memory and virtual machines; packets and networks; resources and servers; secret keys and public keys; Moore's law and Thompson's hack. He describes how building in redundancy guards against failure and how endpoints communicate across the Internet. He explains why programs crash or have other bugs, why they are attacked by viruses, and why those problems are hard to fix. Finally, after examining secrets, trust, and cheating, he explains the mechanisms that allow the Bitcoin system to record money transfers accurately while fending off attacks.

一本關於數位基礎設施的易懂指南，解釋作業系統、網路、安全性等基礎概念，適合一般讀者閱讀。

大多數人對於電腦感到親切，擁有智慧型手機、平板電腦和筆記型電腦，上網查詢資訊並檢查社交媒體以了解朋友的近況。但我們對於這些科技如何運作可能有些模糊。在《從位元到比特幣》一書中，馬克·斯圖爾特·戴為一般讀者提供了一本易懂的數位基礎設施指南，解釋作業系統、網路、安全性等基礎概念以及相關主題。他將讀者從單一處理過程引導至多個相互作用的處理過程；探討失敗的處理過程以及克服失敗的處理過程；並研究相互攻擊或自我防禦的處理過程。

戴告訴我們，步驟是數位的，但斜坡是類比的；計算是關於「用東西做事」，而這些「東西」和「做事」都可以是數位的。他解釋了時間共享、死結和抖動；虛擬記憶體和虛擬機器；封包和網路；資源和伺服器；秘密金鑰和公開金鑰；摩爾定律和湯普森的駭客手法。他描述了如何透過冗餘建構來防範故障，以及端點如何在網際網路上進行通訊。他解釋了為何程式會崩潰或出現其他錯誤，為何會受到病毒攻擊，以及為何這些問題很難修復。最後，在探討秘密、信任和作弊之後，他解釋了比特幣系統如何在防範攻擊的同時準確記錄金錢轉帳的機制。

Mark Stuart Day was Chief Scientist at Riverbed Technology for a decade and is currently Visiting Lecturer at MIT. With more than thirty patented inventions, he has also made technical contributions at Dropbox, IBM, Cisco, Digital, and BBN.

Mark Stuart Day在Riverbed Technology擔任首席科學家長達十年，目前是麻省理工學院的客座講師。他擁有超過三十項專利發明，在Dropbox、IBM、Cisco、Digital和BBN等公司也做出了技術貢獻。