VJOURNAL SMART BOOK · Volume I · The things around us
How it works
Six chapters, each with a live 3D model beside the text: the Internet, the chip, the smartphone, GPS, the camera and neural networks.
Start readingYou use these things every hour, and almost nobody has been shown inside them. This book opens six of them up: the Internet that carries your messages, the chip that thinks, the phone in your pocket, the satellites that know where you are, the camera that catches light and the neural network behind modern AI. Beside every paragraph a small 3D model plays the exact moment the text describes.
Each chapter has five moments. Read a block, press play, and the model jumps to its moment: a photo breaking into packets, a transistor switching, a phone pulled apart layer by layer. Under the picture there is a sandbox where you can send your own message, add two bits, tilt a phone or train a tiny network, and compare the result with the worked example in the text.
Contents
- 01The InternetPackets, cables and names, from 1969 to todayThe Internet cuts every message into tiny packets, sends them along many roads and glues them back together at the other end. Most of the long roads lie on the sea floor.
- 02The computer and the chipBits, transistors and logic, from 1947 to todayA computer only knows 0 and 1. Billions of tiny switches called transistors combine them by simple rules, and that is enough to show a film or play chess.
- 03The smartphoneDisplay, battery, sensors and radio, from 1973 to todayA phone is a tiny computer with a battery, a touch display, motion sensors and a radio. It feels your finger, knows which way is down and talks to a tower nearby.
- 04GPS and satellite navigationSatellites, clocks and relativity, from 1978 to todayGPS satellites keep shouting the time. Your phone checks how long each shout took to arrive and, from the delays, works out where you are to within a few metres.
- 05The cameraPinhole, lens and sensor, from antiquity to todayA camera collects light with a lens and counts it on a sensor. Aperture, shutter and ISO decide how bright and how sharp the picture is, and every pixel ends up as three numbers.
- 06Neural networks and AIArtificial neurons, from 1943 to language modelsA neural network is many tiny calculators joined in layers. It learns by nudging its numbers a little each time it guesses wrong. A chatbot only predicts the next word, so it can be wrong.
What follows
- Robots and sensorsBeing written
- Electric cars and batteriesBeing written
- 3D printingBeing written
- Cryptography and passwordsBeing written
VITON13 LAB
Keep studying on the LAB table
Open the chapter's experiment, timeline or map on VITON13 LAB, with your notes as a document beside it.
Open VITON13 LABAbout this book
How does this animated technology textbook work?
Every chapter pairs a text with a live 3D model. The text is split into blocks, and each block belongs to one moment of the model. Scroll to a block or press its play button and the picture shows that moment. You can pause, scrub the timeline and use the sandbox under the picture to try your own numbers.
Do I need to know programming or electronics?
No. The chapters start from everyday experience and explain every term the first time it appears. The only tools you need are arithmetic and curiosity. Where a formula appears, a sentence in plain words comes first and a worked example with real numbers follows.
Are the numbers in the book real?
Yes. Light in fibre really travels at about 200,000 km/s, GPS satellites really orbit at about 20,200 km, and a sensor really counts light through red, green and blue filters. Dates are checked, theories are marked as theories, and each chapter lists the sources behind its facts.
Which chapter should I start with?
Any of them. The chapters are independent, but the order is natural: the Internet first, then the chip that runs it, the phone that puts both in your hand, GPS and the camera as two of its senses, and neural networks as the newest idea in the book.