Computer Lib/Dream Machines Retrospective

This astonishingly prescient book originally written and published by by Theodor H. Nelson in 1974 in a glorious oversized format is one of the "tap roots" of the soon to be born microcomputer and "cyber" cultures.

The following pages provide a retrospecitve of this work and Ted's current projects and vision. We will present excerpts from the 1975 (second?) edition, kindly provided to us by Dan Croghan.

Cover of Computer Lib with a signature by Ted Nelson to Dan Croghan (the book's owner) and Bruce Damer (DigiBarn curator)

Cover of Dream Machines (on back flip side of Computer Lib, upside-down)

Ted has kindly granted us permission to scan and reproduce Computer Lib/Dream Machines (thanks Ted!) in a selective and serialized fashion, as certain topics come up. We begin this process by reproducing a farseeing section on picture processing and ASCII art from page 10 of Dream Machines.

More excerpts to come from
Computer Lib and Dream Machines

Other Computer Lib/Ted Nelson links

DigiBarn visited by Ted Nelson and Marlene Mallicoat
(Oct 27, 2002)

Ted Nelson on right, greeting Doug Engelbart on left
talk about a historic meeting of minds!
(taken at QuantumViz event, SF Exploratorium, June 10, 2002)

Read a review of Computer Lib/Dream Machines
in the Second Issue of BYTE Magazine, October 1975

Other Computer Lib-related links

Ted Nelson's home page

Project Xanadu Home Page

Review by Vince Juliano

Vision and Reality pages on Computer Lib/Dream Machines (at mprove.de)

We would like to gratefully acknowledge Ted Nelson
for his support of this history project in bringing this
important historic text to life on the Web.

We would also like to acknowledge Dan Croghan
for providing this book on loan to the DigiBarn
for the purposes of this documentation project.