In the Shadow of John McCarthy

For a lighter side of both Steve Russell and Alan Kotok, you absolutely must read Steven Levy's Hackers.

A large chunk of this book deals with the very early computer scene of MIT in the late 1950s and 1960s. Both of those guys played a big role, especially Russell. He developed a game, Spacewar, that just enraptured the whole PDP crowd and led to this mania of gameplay and hacking, gameplay and hacking, etc.

It is really a delightful book. It's great to see these gentlemen recognized for their more formal contributions.

"Even in 1969 the AI lab had a direct news feed from the New York Times. And on-line text chatting between users, with video support was possible"