UXculture

Thierry Bardini: Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing

A profile of the UX pioneer (and inventor of the mouse) who promoted a philosophy of "augmentation" and helped pave the way for groupware, the Web, and more.

Steven Levy: Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything

Dawn of the Desktop paradigm, and the ARC-PARC-Apple breakthrough in 1984.

Pamela Pfiffner: Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story

The story of Adobe, the company that helped to create the culture of Creative Professionals and bridge the distances between computer science, high-end design, and the publishing world.

Nicholas Negroponte: Being Digital

A clear, concise vision for digital culture and the emergence of bits over atoms.

Michael A. Hiltzik: Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age

The seeds of Mac, Windows, Office, Adobe, WYSIWYG, desktop publishing, and network communications—all planted at PARC.

Manuel Castells: The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society

The Internet is the medium, and as Castells notes in this trenchant essay collection, the Network is the Message.

M. Mitchell Waldrop: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

The man who convinced the Pentagon to budget the billions in R&D that created the UX business.

Howard Rheingold: Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology

A great overview of computing history, the PC, and interactive computing pioneers.

Donald A. Norman: The Design of Everyday Things

A classic on closing the gap between design and use (and designers and users.)

David Gelernter: Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox

Prescient in 1991 and still timely today, written by the accomplished computer scientist (and survivor of an attack by the Unibomber.)

Carl Shapiro: Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Moore's Law + Metcalf's Law = Network Economics.

Brenda Laurel: The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design

Everyone from Alan Kay to Timothy Leary weighs in on the magic of the interface.