Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology

About this book

In a highly engaging style Rheingold tells the story of what he calls the patriarchs pioneers and infonauts of the computer focusing in particular on such pioneers as J. C. R. Licklider Doug Engelbart Bob Taylor and Alan Kay. The digital revolution did not begin with the teenage millionaires of Silicon Valley claims Howard Rheingold but with such early intellectual giants as Charles Babbage George Boole and John von Neumann. In a highly engaging style Rheingold tells the story of what he calls the patriarchs pioneers and infonauts of the computer focusing in particular on such pioneers as J. C. R. Licklider Doug Engelbart Bob Taylor and Alan Kay. Taking the reader step by step from nineteenth-century mathematics to contemporary computing he introduces a fascinating collection of eccentrics mavericks geniuses and visionaries. The book was originally published in 1985 and Rheingolds attempt to envision computing in the 1990s turns out to have been remarkably prescient. This edition contains an afterword in which Rheingold interviews some of the pioneers discussed in the book. As an exercise in what he calls "retrospective futurism " Rheingold also looks back at how he looked forward.