The Dream Machine

M. Mitchell Waldrop traces the birth of interactive, networked, and personal computing through J.C.R. Licklider, the psychologist whose vision of human-computer symbiosis and ARPA funding seeded time-sharing and the ARPANET, and whose ideas, carried by proteges like Robert Taylor, reached fruition at Xerox PARC.

4 sections ยท 8 lessons

Course outline

The Vision

  1. The Psychologist Who Reimagined Computers
  2. Man-Computer Symbiosis
  3. Symbiosis or Automation?

From Batch to Interactive

  1. The First Real-Time Machine
  2. Computing as a Utility

Funding the Future

  1. The Freedom to Make Mistakes
  2. The Intergalactic Computer Network
  3. Funding Like Lick

The Network and Its Legacy

  1. From ARPANET to the Internet
  2. The Revolution That Made Computing Personal

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