Clouds, Doors, Islands: From the Transactions at the Heart of Logistics

Without computers there would be no modern logistics. What happens inside these computers and computer networks so that an object or container can be moved from A to B, arrive at the right place and be delivered to the correct recipient is referred to as a transaction. Behind this sober yet omnipresent term lurk illustrative histories that take us, for example, to fictitious ancient Greek islands, into the clouds of Amazon and Microsoft and to the colourful wondrous world of Pixar films. Based on three exemplary stories, Christoph Engemann shows how the computer came to be logistics and logistics came to be the computer.