Tools for Thought (1985)
by Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold: Tools for Thought. The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology
MIT Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-262-68115-5
360 pages, first published 1985, this edition contains additionally an afterword.
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/
This book explains the vision and work of some people in the computing field. Among others:
- Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and George Boole in the 19th century,
- Alan Turing and John von Neumann, during World War II,
- Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, John McCarthy, J. C. R. Licklider in the 1950s and 1960s,
- Alan Kay, Brenda Laurel, Ted Nelson in the 1970s and 1980s.
The War scientific initiative, the hacker scene, and some research organizations such as the XEROX research center at Palo Alto are also described.
The author is a journalist, he explains some technicalities closely but the text remains always understandable for the general public. Emphasys is put on the ideas of the people, their personality, what are they trying to achieve, what they ideals are.
The Afterword in the 2000 edition explains what some of this people (Engelbart, Laurel, Kay) are doing 15 years after and their critic to the new developments such as the WWW.
