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I've recently been reading lots of books about 50/60/70s computing & especially the San Francisco element of it, so I've been watching Engelbart's demo myself o
by jntun 2y ago
I've recently been reading lots of books about 50/60/70s computing & especially the San Francisco element of it, so I've been watching Engelbart's demo myself on and off for the last few weeks. It really is amazing being "close" to all this time of history, even if the only way we can interact with it is over USB nowadays!
Tiniest footnote correction but not only were the desk & offices designed by Herman Miller; the chair Engelbart is sitting on during the demo was also specially designed by Herman Miller!
- dfc 2y agoCan you share some of the titles about computing in the 50-70s?
- ecliptik 2y agoI've been reading The Innovators[1], which includes early computing history, just finished the section on The Mother of all Demos yesterday coincidentally. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)
- jntun 2y agoOf course! What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry [2005] Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age [2000] Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date [1996] Palo Alto [2023] (This is more for capturing the full scope of San Francisco / Palo Alto since the founding of California as a state) Those are some off the top of my head right now being away from my library, probably also the most impactful to me in no specific order.
- pmcjones 2y agoThe Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop Computing in the Middle Ages by Severo Ornstein - https://worrydream.com/refs/Ornstein_2002_-_Computing_in_the_Middle_Ages.pdf https://worrydream.com/refs/Ornstein_2002_-_Computing_in_the...