M. Mitchell Waldrop: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (2001)

While most people may not be familiar with the name J. C. R. Licklider, he was the guiding spirit behind the greatest revolution of the modern era. At a time when most computers were big, ponderous mainframes, he envisioned them as desktop tools that could empower individuals, foster creativity, and allow the sharing of information all over the world. Working from an obscure office in the depths of the Pentagon, he set in motion the forces that could make his vision real. Writing with the same novelistic flair that made his Complexity “the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post), Waldrop presents the history of this great enterprise and the first full-scale portrait of the man whose dream of a “human-computer symbiosis” changed the course of science and culture, gave us the modern world of computing, and laid the foundation for the Internet age.

Publisher Viking, 2001
Sloan Technology series
ISBN 0670899763, 9780670899760
502 pages

google books

PDF (DJVU; updated on 2012-7-17)

Charlie Gere: Digital Culture. 2nd ed. (2009)

From our bank accounts to supermarket checkouts to the movies we watch, strings of ones and zeroes suffuse our world. Digital technology has defined modern society in numerous ways, and the vibrant digital culture that has now resulted is the subject of Charlie Gere’s engaging volume.

In this revised and expanded second edition, taking account of new developments such as Facebook and the iPhone, Charlie Gere charts in detail the history of digital culture, as marked by responses to digital technology in art, music, design, film, literature and other areas. After tracing the historical development of digital culture, Gere argues that it is actually neither radically new nor technologically driven: digital culture has its roots in the eighteenth century and the digital mediascape we swim in today was originally inspired by informational needs arising from industrial capitalism, contemporary warfare and counter-cultural experimentation, among other social changes.

A timely and cutting-edge investigation of our contemporary social infrastructures, Digital Culture is essential reading for all those concerned about the ever-changing future of our Digital Age.

Edition 2
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2009
ISBN 1861893884, 9781861893888
240 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-24)

Leo Beranek: Riding the Waves. A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry (2008)

Leo Beranek, an Iowa farm boy who became a Renaissance man—scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, musician, television executive, philanthropist, and author—has lived life in constant motion. His seventy-year career, through the most tumultuous and transformative years of the last century, has always been propelled by the sheer exhilaration of trying something new. In Riding the Waves, Leo Beranek tells his story.

Beranek’s life changed direction on a summer day in 1935 when he stopped to help a motorist with a flat tire. The driver just happened to be a former Harvard professor of engineering, who guided the young Beranek toward a full scholarship at Harvard’s graduate school of engineering. Beranek went on to be one of the world’s leading experts on acoustics. He became Director of Harvard’s Electro-Acoustic Laboratory, where he invented the Hush-A-Phone—a telephone accessory that began the chain of regulatory challenges and lawsuits that led ultimately to the breakup of the Bell Telephone monopoly in the 1980s. Beranek moved to MIT to be a professor and Technical Director of its Acoustics Laboratory, then left academia to manage the acoustical consulting firm Bolt Beranek and Newman. Known for his work in noise control and concert acoustics, Beranek devised the world’s largest muffler to quiet jet noise and served as acoustical consultant for concert halls around the world (including the Tanglewood Music Shed, the storied summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra). As president of BBN, he assembled the software group that invented both the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, and e-mail.

In the 1970s, Beranek risked his life savings to secure the license to operate a television station; he turned Channel 5 in Boston into one of the country’s best, then sold it to Metromedia in 1982 for the highest price ever paid up to that time for a broadcast station. “One central lesson I’ve learned is the value of risk-taking and of moving on when risks turn into busts or odds look better elsewhere,” Beranek writes. Riding the Waves is a testament to the boldness, diligence, and intelligence behind Beranek’s lifetime of extraordinary achievement.

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
Volume 30 of Current Studies in Linguistics
ISBN 0262026295, 9780262026291
235 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)