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

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Penguin Books, 2002 - Computers - 502 pages
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"The year is 1962. More than a decade will pass before personal computers emerge from the garages of Silicon Valley, and a full thirty years before the Internet explosion of the 1990s. The word computer still has an ominous tone, conjuring up the image of a huge, intimidating device hidden away in an overlit, air-conditioned basement, relentlessly processing punch cards for some large institution: them. Yet, sitting in a nondescript office in Robert McNamara's Pentagon, a quiet forty-seven-year-old civilian is already planning the revolution that will change forever the way computers are perceived. Somehow, the occupant of that office - a former MIT psychologist named J. C. R. Licklider - has seen a future in which computers will empower individuals, instead of forcing them into rigid conformity. He is almost alone in his conviction that computers can become not just superfast calculating machines but joyful machines: tools that will serve as new media of expression, inspirations to creativity, and gateways to a vast world of on line information. And now he is determined to use the Pentagon's money to make that vision a reality."--BOOK JACKET. -- Interview.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - joeldinda - LibraryThing

The Dream Machine, which is nominally a biography of J.C.R. Licklider, is actually an overview of the history of computing from M.I.T.'s Whirlwind effort through the beginnings of true personal ... Read full review

THE DREAM MACHINE: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

User Review  - Kirkus

Meet J.C.R. Licklider, the man who put "personal" in "personal computers," in this lively, memorable, and wickedly detailed biography from Waldrop (Creativity, not reviewed).In what amounts to a ... Read full review

Contents

Tracys Dad
1
Missouri Boys
7
The Last Transition
24
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

M. Mitchell Waldrop, formerly a senior writer at "Science" magazine, is the author of "Complexity" & "Man-Made Minds". He lives in Washington, D.C.

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