I've read Alan Kay refer to the field of programming as pop culture in Coders at Work and the following interview on drdobbs:<p>"Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future — it's living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]."<p>http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442?pgno=1<p>What books, documentaries, papers, essays, etc would you recommend to someone hoping to better verse themselves in programming/software's history?
Most important software innovations, 1837 --
<a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html#innovations" rel="nofollow">http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html#innovatio...</a><p>Origins and precursors, 1936 - 1982: Turing, Von Neumann, Shannon, etc.
<a href="http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/cs298.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/cs298.html</a><p>A Golden Age? 1964 -- 1974
<a href="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2059" rel="nofollow">http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2059</a><p>Significant new inventions in computing since 1980
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...</a><p>Lisp machines, other language-based machines and OS: Smalltalk, etc.
<a href="https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursors.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursor...</a>
OK, as a non-coder, I'd recommend seeing the video of The Mother of All Demos:<p><a href="http://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY</a><p>I'd also suggest reading Ted Nelson's book, "Literary Machines."<p>Another book would be Steven Levy's "Hackers." And Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine's book, "Fire in the Valley."