Kevin Lynch, the Chief Software Architect at Macromedia has started writing a Weblog
www.klynch.com.
It is great reading his Software story and reading his Foundation articles. These articles are a collection of some of the most influential books, articles and papers which he has come across.
Many thinkers and inventors developed the foundations that influence what we do today, with a tremendous amount of innovation beginning in the aftermath of World War II. Some that inspire me beyond the recent decade include:Kevin Lynch
As We May Think by Vannevar Bush (July 1945)
Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider (1960)
Spacewar by Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards and Martin Graetz, together with Alan Kotok, Steve Piner and Robert A. Saunders. (1962)
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework by Douglas Engelbart, SRI (October 1962)
Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System by Ivan Sutherland, MIT (1963)
Xanadu by Ted Nelson (1965)
The Computer as a Communication Device by J.C.R. Licklider (1968)
The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks, lessons learned from IBM’s System/360 project (1975)
The Xerox Star: A Retrospective about the team of Alan Kay, Larry Tesler, Charles Irby, John Warnock, Chuck Geschke, Charles Simonyi, Butler Lampson, David Liddle, Ed Satterthwaite, and many others at Xerox (1975-1981)
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, about a team building a new computer at Data General (1981)
Inventing the Lisa User Interface developed by Larry Tesler, Bill Atkinson, and the Lisa team at Apple (1979-1983)
Macintosh developed by Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Susan Kare, Bud Tribble, Burrell Smith, Mike Boich, Joanna Hoffman, Mike Murray, George Crow, Bruce Horn, Steve Capps, Caroline Rose, Jef Raskin, Steve Jobs and many more (1984)
The Desktop of Tomorrow by Norm Meyrowitz, Brown University (July 1989)
Information Management: A Proposal by Tim Berners-Lee, CERN (1989)
The Computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC (September 1991)