Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold April, 2000: a revised
edition of Tools for Thought is available from MIT Press,
including a revised chapter with 1999 interviews of Doug
Engelbart, Bob Taylor, Alan Kay, Brenda Laurel, and Avron
Barr.The idea that people could use computers to amplify thought
and communication, as tools for intellectual work and social
activity, was not an invention of the mainstream computer
industry or orthodox computer science, nor even homebrew
computerists; their work was rooted in older, equally eccentric,
equally visionary, work. You can't really guess where mind-
amplifying technology is going unless you understand where it
came from. His unicycle skills notwithstanding, Claude Shannon
has been more flamboyant but no less brilliant than his elder
colleagues. Rather than advertising his own genius like Wiener,
or blitzing the world of science with salvo after salvo of
landmark findings like von Neumann, Claude Shannon has published
unprolifically, and he spends more time attempting