Finally read The Dream Machine which was soooo good. I found the writing a bit of a slog, but the research is gold. Curious how many here have read the whole thing? Had no idea Lick was all about modeling. 🙂 I also just discovered “The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation” which is blowing my mind. The two are fun to juxtapose.

That book has been in my backlog for a long time now, maybe it’s time to order it.

I did read the whole book a few years ago, and I agree that it's not an example of good writing, but worth it for the contents.

One of the best books on the subject out there. Beautifully researched, well written, just a pleasure. Waldrop is really great, both as a journalist and person.

Just started it and there's a lot of "character development" in the beginning...

Be patient 😅

I haven’t read the whole thing but need to go back and finish it. I wonder people’s thoughts on Licklider being able to do his thing in today’s environment. I don’t think he could and would likely be sidelined. There’s just not much curiosity anymore in funding.

Lick had the cold war and ARPA. The computing related finding was peanuts compared to was being spent on other military/space efforts. But those peanuts wete more than enough to create one of the best research communities in history, giving us pretty much everything we know about computing today. Starting with the Mansfield amendments in ’72, then the neo-libertarian market dynamics of ’80s, winding down of the cold war etc the idea of investing in research was supplanted in investing in projects (which is what the US gov’t, including the NSF now does). Someone like Lick coming along and carving out a space to invest in strong people and ideas, ideas independent of market or military needs, seems hard to imagine today.