The Dream Machine

J.C.R. Licklider, once a psychologist at MIT, is the subject of M. Mitchell Waldrop's history of how personal, interactive computing was first imagined. In 1962, when computers meant huge machines processing punch cards for large institutions, Licklider sat in Robert McNamara's Pentagon and pictured computers that would empower individuals and become media of expression, aids to creativity and gateways to online information. He built none of the first personal computers and wrote none of their software, but he wrote about an Intergalactic Network, human-computer symbiosis and computers as communication tools, and he meant to use Pentagon money to pursue that vision. Waldrop credits him with instigating the work that led to the internet and calls him computing's Johnny Appleseed.

Patrick Collison has it on his Bookshelf list.