Dream Machine [Hardcover]

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 Lightner

Licklider was a brilliant scientist whose essential contributions to cognitive psychology and cybernetics included critical early developments in the field of man-machine interaction. However, his original work is often overshadowed by his accomplishments as a teacher, administrator and project leader and this ably written and well-researched biography isn't likely to propel him into the limelight. Waldrop (Man-Made Minds) devotes about 20% of the book to Licklider himself; the rest covers his teachers, colleagues and students at MIT and the Pentagon including computing pioneers Douglas Engelbart, Wes Clark and Larry Roberts and Licklider's indirect influence on the development of personal computers and the Internet (via "the world's first large-scale experiment in personal computing" at MIT). To his credit, Waldrop avoids common stereotypes of computer nerds or saints, delivering a vivid account of Licklider and his contemporaries. But he was not able to interview Licklider (who died in 1990), nor does he include material from personal papers or memoirs. Instead, Waldrop bases most of the book on secondary accounts, including biographies and histories of technology. The result is an informative and engaging history of computers from the 1930s to the 1970s, with an emphasis on Licklider and his period of greatest influence, 1957 to 1968. (Aug. 27)Forecast: A six-city author tour will raise some interest, but there isn't much demand for another history of computing and the Internet, especially when Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon's Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Martin Campbell-Kelly's Computer cover the same material.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Licklider, known to many simply as "Lick," was a revolutionary thinker for his time. During the early 1960s, he viewed the computer as a tool of communication and focused his attention on networking them for accessing information and resource sharing. Waldrop, a former writer for Science magazine and author of Complexity, paints a comprehensive portrait of his subject, describing how his dream of a "human-computer symbiosis" would change the course of history and culture. Lick's work as the director of the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) for the Department of Defense led him to envision "a user at a remote terminal, having access to a variety of resources at several interconnected computer centers." While heading ARPA, he developed time-sharing the interactive use of computers by several people at the same time and paved the way for the creation of the Internet. This fascinating account is recommended for an informed audience. Joe Accardi, William Rainey Harper Coll., Palatine, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Because what we now know as the Internet evolved from the contributions of many, it is difficult to credit any one person with its creation. If there is a single individual to be recognized, though, Waldrop makes a strong case that it should be J. C. R. Licklider, who both envisioned and enabled the Internet. When computing still relied on punched cards and batch processing, Licklider foresaw interactive computing in a paper entitled "Man-Computer Symbiosis." As head of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), he oversaw funding for experiments in computer timesharing, artificial intelligence, and "freehand communication" with computers. Waldrop, a former senior writer for Science magazine, is the author of Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992). There Waldrop put a human face on bold new theories being developed at the Santa Fe Institute and its quirky coterie of scientists. Now Waldrop performs the same feat as he tracks Licklider's career and shows how he influenced the work of those he worked with and those who followed him. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A rollicking account of a good, old-fashioned visionary who gathered together...like-minded visionaries to make the whole expansive notion of personal computing and networking a reality. -- Kirkus, June 15, 2001

A rollicking account of a good, old-fashioned visionary... -- Kirkus, June 15, 2001

An account of the enterprise of J.C.R. Licklider, a visionary in the early days of the computer revolution. Discusses his dreams for the creativity of computers in an age in which they were believed to be facilitators of rigid conformity, showing how Licklider invented the first personal computer. DLC: Licklider, J.C.R.

M. Mitchell Waldrop, formerly a senior writer at Science magazine, is the author of Complexity and Man-Made Minds.