One of the 'founding fathers of HCI', John Carroll, has written an excellent historic overview of how the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) developed, diversified and matured. A must read, really puts some developments into perspective.

Today, largely due to the success of that endeavor, HCI is a vast and multifaceted community, loosely bound by the evolving concept of usability, and the integrating commitment to value human concerns as the primary consideration in creating interactive systems.