Tag Archives: Computers

Review of The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having just read Katie Hafner’s Where Wizard’s Stay Up Late I was ready to tackle this book, which is both deeper and more ambitious. Where Hafner’s book was purely about the origin of the Internet, Waldrop is taking on the whole idea of personal computing. Licklider thus provides the focus for this book, for while he played a crucial role in promoting networking, his true aim was always what he termed a symbiotic partnership between humans and computers, and for him networking was just a necessary step to getting there. That is one of the reasons Licklider provided crucial support to Doug Engelbart, for instance. And even when Licklider was out of the picture (during the heyday of Xerox PARC, for instance) Waldrop keeps his focus on the development of the personal computer. If you like this kind of history and want to know just who did what in those early days, this book is indispensable.

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Review of Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a classic book that sat on my shelf for a while and I just decided to pick it up and read. It was very rewarding. It tells the story of how the Internet came to be, and opens with one of the pioneers explaining that he wants to kill the myth that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war. It wasn’t, and most of the people involved never thought about it (though Paul Baran did, apparently). But the way it happened is fascinating, and people who pulled this off were some of the best and brightest of technology. I recommend it highly.

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Tablet share numbers prove I was right

In November 2011 I made the claim here, and on my blog, that by the end of 2012 Apple and Android would have essentially equal market shares. And the 4th Q 2012 numbers show that I was correct. I doubt there are any wonderful prizes for this, but there it is.

My prediction was based on one simple observation: At the time I made this prediction, the relative market shares of iOS and Android in the tablet market had tracked, with the right lag, the market shares in the smartphone market. So I looked ta how long it took for Android to achieve parity in the smartphone market and predicted it would do similarly in the tablet market. And there is no reason to think this won’t continue. The point of rough parity in the smartphone market came in November 2010, and since then Android’s share has only grown, to the point that the world-wide share of Android is now around 4x that of iOS. So I expect a firm lead to develop by the end of 2013, and by the end of 2014 total dominance for Android.