![]() ![]() The corporate research lab is dead, and DoD funding just isn't how it used to be. Sadly Licklider's ARPA and Xerox PARC seem impossible to create today. How much longer would computing or the Internet have taken to develop without WWII and the Cold War? Could private players like Bell Labs or academia have picked up the slack? How do Chinese subsidies to AI and hypersonics compare, and why did Japan fail to emulate these basic research subsidies in the 80s and 90s? War projects like ENIAC and Sage practically originated the programming profession, and DoD funding birthed desktop computing and the Internet almost as an afterthought. Reading The Dream Machine really gives one a sense for large a role the US military played in computing. ![]() A real standout is Chapter 2, which shows both how the "computer" originated from dozens of separate contributions like binary logic and vacuum tubes and how important integrators like Von Neumann were in piecing them together. It has excellent introductions of the big names - Von Neumann, Shannon, Englebart, etc - but avoids the temptation of "great man" history. The Dream Machine is an excellent and highly accessible introduction to the history of computing. ![]()
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