The year is 1962. More than a decade will pass before personal computers emerge from the garages of Silicon Valley, and a full thirty years will go by before the Internet explodes in the 1990s. The word "computer" still has an ominous tone, conjuring up the image of a huge, mysterious machine hidden away in an air-conditioned basement, relentlessly processing punch-cards for some large institution: them. Yet, sitting in a nondescript office in Robert McNamara's Pentagon, a tall, rumpled civilian is quietly planning the revolution that will change that perception forever.

True, J.C.R. Licklider doesn't look like much of a revolutionary, even by 1962 standards; at age 47 he is more of an absent-minded professor, and is not even really a technologist; he has made his academic reputation as an experimental psychologist at Harvard and MIT. In fact, Licklider could easily be mistaken for just another bureaucrat; after all, his only official reason for being at the Pentagon is to organize a program of computer research for ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department's civilian research arm.

And yet, this "bureaucrat" is setting in motion the forces that will one day give rise to the Internet itself, not to mention personal computers, the windows-and-mouse interface, graphical displays, and essentially all the rest of modern computing. Somehow, J.C.R. Licklider has seen a future in which computers will empower individuals, instead of forcing us all into rigid conformity. He has seen a future in which computers will be joyful machines, and not just superfast calculating machines. He has seen a future in which computers will serve us as new mediums of expression, inspirations to creativity, and gateways into a vast world of online information -- in which computers and humans are destined to join together in a kind of symbiosis, an intellectual partnership more powerful than any in the history of the world. And now, from the depths of the mightiest bureaucracy in the world, he is using the Pentagon's money to make that vision a reality...

M. Mitchell Waldrop's THE DREAM MACHINE: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal is the epic account of this great enterprise and the first in-depth portrait of J. C. R. Licklider, the unsung visionary whose dream of a "human-computer symbiosis" is still in the very air we breathe.

Reviews of THE DREAM MACHINE

"The story is fascinating, played out in almost 500 pages of engrossing politics, personalities, and passions...for those who want the whole story, well told, it is...very good."--Wired

"THE DREAM MACHINE works admirably as an exploration of the intellectual and political roots of the rise of modern computing. It's an ambitious and worthwhile addition to the history of science."--The San Francisco Chronicle

"A rollicking account of a good, old-fashioned visionary who gathered together--under one roof or connected by cables--like-minded visionaires to make the whole expansive notion of personal computing and networking a reality." --Kirkus Reviews

"In THE DREAM MACHINE, M. Mitchell Waldrop has written a sprawling history of the ideas, individuals and groups of people that got us from punch cards to personal computers...Waldrop's account...is compelling." --The New York Times