Dream Machine

The story of the man who instigated the work that led to the internet—and shifted our understanding of what computers could be. Behind every great revolution is a vision and behind perhaps the greatest revolution of our time, personal computing, is the vision of J.C.R. Licklider. He did not design the first personal computers or write the software that ran on them, nor was he involved in the legendary early companies that brought them to the forefront of our everyday experience. He was instead a relentless visionary that saw the potential of the way individuals could interact with computers and software. At a time when computers were a short step removed from mechanical data processors, Licklider was writing treatises on "human-computer symbiosis", "computers as communication devices", and a now not-so-unfamiliar "Intergalactic Network." His ideas became so influential, his passion so contagious, that Waldrop called him "computing's Johnny Appleseed. In a simultaneously compelling personal narrative and comprehensive historical exposition, Waldrop tells the story of the man who not only instigated the work that led to the internet, but also shifted our understanding of what computers were and could be. Included in this edition are also the original texts of Licklider's three most influential writings: 'Man-computer symbiosis' (1960), which outlines the vision that inspired the personal computer revolution of the 1970s; his 'Intergalactic Network' memo (1963), which outlines the vision that inspired the internet; and "The computer as a communication device" (1968, co-authored with Robert Taylor), which amplifies his vision for what the network could become.

The story of two talent agents and their three troubled boys, heirs to Hollywood royalty; a sweeping narrative about fathers and sons, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood and, by extension, American life. American Dream Machine is the story of an iconic striver, a classic self-made man in the vein of Jay Gatsby or Augie March. It's the story of a talent agent and his troubled sons, two generations of Hollywood royalty. It's a sweeping narrative about parents and children, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood, and by extension, American life. Beau Rosenwald—overweight, not particularly handsome, and improbably charismatic—arrives in Los Angeles in 1962 with nothing but an ill-fitting suit and a pair of expensive brogues. By the late 1970s he has helped found the most successful agency in Hollywood. Through the eyes of his son, we watch Beau and his partner go to war, waging a seismic battle that redraws the lines of an entire industry. We watch Beau rise and fall and rise again, in accordance with the cultural transformations that dictate the fickle world of movies. We watch Beau's partner, the enigmatic and cerebral Williams Farquarsen, struggle to contain himself, to control his impulses and consolidate his power. And we watch two generations of men fumble and thrive across the LA landscape, learning for themselves the shadows and costs exacted by success and failure. Mammalian, funny, and filled with characters both vital and profound, American Dream Machine is a piercing interrogation of the role—nourishing, as well as destructive—that illusion plays in all our lives.

Dream Machines is a history of the ways in which machines have been imagined. It considers seven different kinds of speculative, projected or impossible machine: machines for teleportation, dream-production, sexual pleasure and medical treatment and cure, along with 'influencing machines', invisibility machines and perpetual motion machines.

Can a person die from dreaming? A modern secret shaman transforms into his boyhood self through the power of dreaming to rescue his nephew's soul from sorcerers colluding with their otherworldly allies. Michael, the hero, confronts the soul collectors in a Mexican town where the future and past are as immediate as the present and the laws of nature are maligned. Will the boy-hero remember his mission and the omens of his past or will he succumb to the magnetic allure of the mystic town?

WHEN THE MARINES decided to buy a helicopter-airplane hybrid “tiltrotor” called the V-22 Osprey, they saw it as their dream machine. The tiltrotor was the aviation equivalent of finding the Northwest Passage: an aircraft able to take off, land, and hover with the agility of a helicopter yet fly as fast and as far as an airplane. Many predicted it would reshape civilian aviation. The Marines saw it as key to their very survival. By 2000, the Osprey was nine years late and billions over budget, bedeviled by technological hurdles, business rivalries, and an epic political battle over whether to build it at all. Opponents called it one of the worst boondoggles in Pentagon history. The Marines were eager to put it into service anyway. Then two crashes killed twenty- three Marines. They still refused to abandon the Osprey, even after the Corps’ own proud reputation was tarnished by a national scandal over accusations that a commander had ordered subordinates to lie about the aircraft’s problems. Based on in-depth research and hundreds of interviews, The Dream Machine recounts the Marines’ quarter-century struggle to get the Osprey into combat. Whittle takes the reader from the halls of the Pentagon and Congress to the war zone of Iraq, from the engineer’s drafting table to the cockpits of the civilian and Marine pilots who risked their lives flying the Osprey—and sometimes lost them. He reveals the methods, motives, and obsessions of those who designed, sold, bought, flew, and fought for the tiltrotor. These stories, including never before published eyewitness accounts of the crashes that made the Osprey notorious, not only chronicle an extraordinary chapter in Marine Corps history, but also provide a fascinating look at a machine that could still revolutionize air travel.

This sweeping novel about fathers and sons, the movie business and the changes that have shaped American culture follows Beau Rosenwald as he and his partner Williams Farquarsen, helming the most successful agency in Hollywood, fumble and thrive across the LA landscape.

Daniel like dreaming. If only life were more like his dreams... Daniel plays goal for a junior team, and lately they have been losing.

This novel of the trilogy finds Claudette Monet, having traveled from New York City to Boston. Boston was known to her as the premier American center for elite institutions of all kinds. It is here in Boston that Claudette invents and proves The Painter’s Dream Machine with her painterly novelesque fantasmagoria and short painterly dreams. Readers can imagine for themselves what all the people in this trilogy looked like.