Highlights first synced by [[readwise]] [[September 2nd, 2020]]

• The project had embodied the most peaceful intentions—to link computers at scientific laboratories across the country so that researchers might share computer resources. (Location 64)
• One aspect of his career at P&G that he was most proud of was the amount of money the company had devoted to research. He believed in the value of unfettered science, in its ability to produce remarkable, if not always predictable, results. (Location 184)
• For several years, he had been touting a radical and visionary notion: that computers weren’t just adding machines. Computers had the potential to act as extensions of the whole human being, as tools that could amplify the range of human intelligence and expand the reach of our analytical powers. (Location 352)
• “Anybody who could do 85 or better on the Miller Analogies Test, hire him, because he’s going to be very good at something.” (Location 432)
• He imagined what he called “home computer consoles” and television sets linked together in a massive network. “The political process,” he wrote, “would essentially be a giant teleconference, and a campaign would be a months-long series of communications among candidates, propagandists, commentators, political action groups, and voters. (Location 476)
• “The idea was that you take this powerful computer and feed it all this qualitative information, such as ‘The air force chief drank two martinis,’ or ‘Khrushchev isn’t reading Pravda on Mondays.’” recalled Ruina. “And the computer would play Sherlock Holmes and conclude that the Russians must be building an MX-72 missile or something like that.” First Ruina, then Licklider, tried putting a stop to such “asinine kinds of things,” as Lick described the ill-conceived projects. (Location 532)
• Intergalactic Computer Network. (Location 540)
• And therein lay the seed of Licklider’s grandest vision yet. He would extend the concept of the Intergalactic Network to mean not just a group of people to whom he was sending memos but a universe of interconnected computers over which all might send their memos. (Location 550)