Mitchell M. Waldrop

A revolving, difficult to follow account of the various disciplines and pivotal figures in the development of chaos theory and from that artificial intelligence. I didn’t realise on purchase that this book was written in the mid 90’s and it shows. The narration varies between smug, forgettable and unappealing. Unless you have a specific interest in the origin of these theories or the individual personalities then avoid.

This book painted a really inspirational picture for me of the pioneering days of computing. There is a lot of extremely well researched history here that I really had no clue about beyond high level details about ARPA and ARPANET.

The book is about JCR Licklider , a truly fascinating and compelling guy who somehow managed to be a driving force behind a wide range of movements that drove computing off of the big iron/batch style status quo of IBM and to the interactive time sharing and show more eventually the stand alone graphical terminals of PARC. Completely fascinating read, but a bit slow in the first 50 pages or so.

I had to wonder if Lick's role wasn't being overstated by the author, but at the same time the portrait of the man felt honest and included warts that balanced the narrative and avoided making him too big of a hero. I only wish that the man was still alive so we could see more of him and so that he could see more of what he helped create. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3513249.html

This is a breezy introduction to the interdisciplinary topic of complexity, but I confess I had not realised that it is almost thirty years old, having been published in 1992. It's also a bit too heavily skewed to covering the academic politics of setting up the Santa Fe Institute and not really all that detailed on the core points of what complexity theory actually is, and why it might be useful. So I didn't learn all that much from it, and I think show more I'll have to keep looking for a good introduction to the topic. show less

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 computing in Silicon Valley; much of the book concerns ARPA and ARPAnet. Lick's biography is embedded in the story, but its purpose is to center the discussion. The predominant focus of the book is on the efforts of Licklider's colleagues, and it often strays far from his life story.

This is a terrific show more book. The writing is lucid, the research--though predominantly from secondary sources--is excellent. If you plan to read one book about the ARPA computing effort, this should be that book.



This short review has also been published on a dabbler's journal. show less