Only recently have we begun to appreciate the radical degree to which informatics—the science of computers and algorithms—is transforming modern society. In this lively and accessible survey of its foundations
and implications, Gérard Berry shows how information and data have come to occupy a central role not only in our technologies and sciences, but also in our daily lives. This growing dominance of smart devices, algorithms, and networked data, he argues, has helped usher in a new technological paradigm that cannot be fully grasped with the
materialist mathematical and scientific models of the twentieth century alone. Consequently, we are living in an era of unevenly distributed understanding and mastery—and thus power.

To correct this imbalance and puncture some widespread misapprehensions about information technology, The Hyperpower of Informatics examines and explains the informatics underpinnings of everyday operations like email, digital photography, and peer-to-peer file sharing; emergent technological trends including cryptocurrencies and
autonomous vehicles; and specialized areas such as medical imaging and mathematical research. Also attentive to the proliferation of programming bugs and security holes and the critical systems that may hang in the balance, Berry takes a holistic perspective of informatics and its growing prominence in a continually shifting landscape.
Filled with in-depth illustrations related with wit and verve, The Hyperpower of Informatics is an essential companion for investigating and demystifying the role of informatics in all aspects of the contemporary world.

Gérard Berry is a professor emeritus at the Collège de France, where he directed the chair of Algorithms, Machines, and Languages until 2019, and previously the chairs of Informatics and Digital Sciences and Technical Innovation. He is a member of the Académie des Sciences, the Académie des Technologies, and the Academia Europaea. He is a recipient of the gold medal from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). 

1. Cover Page
2. Title Page
3. Copyright Page
4. Foreword
5. Chapter 1 - Introduction: a new way of thinking
   1. Computational thinking
   2. The structure of this book
   3. Computer or digital?
   4. Computational thinking
   5. The dangers of twentieth-century mental models
   6. Fortunately, minds are changing
   7. Gender parity is unfortunately very, very far away. Why?
6. Part one - From material to immaterial
   1. Chapter 2 - The main principles
      1. The twentieth-century triangle
      2. A new science of information and calculation
      3. From mechanical calculator to computer
      4. How information unifies and transforms everything
      5. Books, photos, and sounds
   2. Chapter 3 - The four pillars of informatics
      1. Data
      2. Algorithms
      3. Languages
      4. Machines and circuits
      5. Bugs
      6. Why parallel computations further amplify bugs
7. Part two - Case studies
   1. Chapter 4 - Telecommunications: from cables to ether
      1. The telegraph, a little-known revolution
      2. Conventional telephony
      3. Wireless telephony
      4. From copper to ADSL and optical fiber
      5. Advances in algorithmic coding and transmission
   2. Chapter 5 - The internet, from people to objects
      1. The internet network: a major mental inversion
      2. Decentralized packet transmission
      3. Data flow transmission and traffic management
      4. The World Wide Web
      5. Searching the web
      6. Peer-to-peer, an epidemic model for data dissemination
      7. From computerized objects to the internet of things
      8. Internet security
   3. Chapter 6 - Digital images, sounds, and maps
      1. Digital photography
      2. How a camera captures light
      3. From raw image to visible image
      4. Other algorithmic corrections
      5. Algorithmic merging of multiple images
      6. Shooting assistance
      7. Codesign of lenses and algorithms
      8. Manufacturer and photographer dilemmas
      9. Digital mapping
      10. Transition to the third dimension
   4. Chapter 7 - Computerized medicine
      1. Computerized medical imaging
      2. Digital anatomy
      3. Interventional radiology
      4. The advent of automatic learning in medicine
      5. Never forget the patient
   5. Chapter 8 - Toward a massive computerization of science
      1. The fundamental role of instruments in the natural sciences
      2. The computerization of astronomy
      3. The computerization of physics
      4. Bioinformatics and computational biology
      5. Computational neuroscience
      6. Computer science in mathematics
8. Part three - Making informatics safer
   1. Chapter 9 - Bugs and security holes: two dangers of informatics
      1. Timing bugs are amazingly frequent
      2. The bug that killed Ariane 501
      3. Some Martian bugs
      4. Avionics and rail networks, critical and serious areas of concern
      5. Automotive systems, an area that is unfortunately less serious
      6. A historical medical bug: the Therac-25
      7. Tooling bugs
      8. Distributed system bugs
      9. Hardware circuit bugs
      10. From bugs to security holes
   2. Chapter 10 - How to make informatics safer
      1. An essential preliminary: characterizing good and bad behavior
      2. Software engineering
      3. From testing to formal methods
      4. Automated proof systems
      5. Interactive proof assistants
      6. Formal verification for security issues
      7. When should we use formal verification?
      8. Three personal experiences
   3. Chapter 11 - Where will the informatization of the world lead us? A personal vision
      1. Preliminaries
      2. The evolution of hardware
      3. The evolution of traditional software
      4. Machine learning or artificial intelligence?
      5. Information technology in society
      6. Teaching informatics, from primary to high school
      7. The problem of gender parity in informatics
9. Appendices
   1. 1. The science of algorithms
   2. 2. Digital circuit for arithmetic operations
   3. 3. Solving a Sudoku with SAT
   4. 4. From sequentiality to parallelism and distribution
   5. 5. Why so many programming languages?
   6. 6. The evolution of needs and languages
   7. 7. Compilers and bootstrapping
10. Bibliography
11. Endnotes
12. Contents