The Dream Machine: J.C.R. 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. Science  writer M. Mitchell Waldrop carefully balances this hero culture with a  historian's mania for completeness inThe Dream Machine: J.C.R.  Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing  Personal."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 colorful 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 Lightner--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.