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This book provides a vision on the evolution of information technology from the perspective of the visions of several researchers, their "techno-manifestos".
Technomanifestos:
Visions From the Information Revolutionaries
Adam Brate
TEXERE Publishing Ltd
377 pages
March 20, 2002
ISBN 1587991039
Technomanifestos is half story and half analysis of the evolution of information technology in the second half of the twentieth century as envisioned in the writings of several human icons of this quite heterogeneous field: Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Englebart, Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, Alan Kay, Marshall McLuhan, Abbie Hoffman, Richard Stallman, Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Wall, Eric S. Raymond, Lawerence Lessig, K. Eric Drexler, Bill Joy and Jaron Lanier.
Brate classifies these visionaries as "techno-humanitarians" - engineers, programmers, computer scientists, and activists dealing with the intersection of technology and society. Their writings are motivated by other movements of their times.
The main value of this text comes from the limited but very interesting cataloging of key documents that any well-informed information technologist should know about. Brate does not enter very deep into the analysis of the visions themselves, limiting himself to the study of the sociological interaction of visionaries with society at large and among themselves.
Value for time: 7.5
Main value: Pointer
Some of the Manifestos
Bush's As We may Think
Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis
Engelbart's
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework
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