The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal Book

Science writer M Mitchell Waldrop carefully balances the prevailing "hero culture" with a historian's mania for completeness in The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. While it's true that no one person's vision encompassed all of what we now consider personal computing, we can't help but focus on individual effort as we try to understand how we got here. "Lick," as his students and colleagues called him, was deeply involved in guiding the evolution of personal and networked computing from the 1950s through the 1980s after leaving a career in cognitive psychology. Waldrop captures his spirit vividly--contrary to our stereotypical view of computer scientists, Licklider was profoundly interested in his fellow humans, and this interest helped him lead the design of technology adapted to human needs. Waldrop interviewed dozens of contemporaries and examined reams of notes and primary sources to compose this massive biography of influence that stretches from MIT to the Pentagon to Xerox PARC and far beyond. If it sometimes seems that Licklider was a little too well-beloved, especially in comparison to some of the more colourful figures in computing's recent history, it is worth remembering that his patience and humility were the very qualities that helped deliver the home computing revolution we take for granted today. If we had to choose just one 20th-century computer pioneer that we couldn't do without, it would have to be the man behind The Dream Machine. --Rob LightnerRead More