[ih] J.C.R. Licklider

[Jack Haverty]

Speaking of Internet History, the ARPANET et al --- There's another 
player from the early days of The Internet that may not be well known to 
Internet historians - J.C.R. Licklider

 From 1970 through 1977, I was in Licklider's group at MIT, first as a 
student and then as a member of his research staff.   Sometime in the 
early 1960s, Lick (as everyone called him then) wrote several papers 
describing his vision of a "intergalactic network" of computers, all 
somehow able to communicate with each other, and working together to 
help humans "do everything humans do."   His vision included the notion 
that everyone would have some kind of "personal" computer that would 
interact with other computers even when the human was doing something else.

Of course, in 1975 a "personal computer" was an account on some large 
timeshared machine, and the human interacted with it only when s/he was 
"logged in" at some kind of terminal.  Today, humans have computers in 
their pockets much more powerful than the 1970s machines, and able to 
interact with huge numbers of other computers using this thing we call 
The Internet.   As AI and its "agents" emerge, we may be getting very 
close to Lick's vision of vast numbers of interacting computers helping 
humans do everything humans do.

During the 1970s, I was thoroughly indoctrinated into Lick's 
"intergalactic network" vision of how computers would be integrated into 
society.   In retrospect, I've realized that I spent my entire career 
somehow involved in building Lick's vision, as part of the huge 
community that made it happen.  It's been a wild ride and there's still 
a question of whether we'll see a utopian future or one where AI kills 
us all.

For anyone interested in the history of the Internet, I highly recommend 
a book by Mitchell Waldrop, called "The Dream Machine". It is 
essentially a biography of Lick, but also describes much of the 
1960-1990 history of computing.  Among the details you may not know:

- Lick's training was in psychology and psychoacoustics, not computer 
science.
- The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of ARPA was formed 
to explore use of computers.  Lick was the first Director of IPTO, and 
the ARPANET was a means of starting work on his vision;
- Prior to joining ARPA, Lick worked at BBN, and lobbied for the 
company's first computer purchase.  It was necessary to process data 
associated with the study of acoustics; later, ARPA awarded the ARPANET 
contract to BBN;  Connection?
- Lick was very much a "do it" person, preferring functioning systems 
over theory;  he described what we now call "agents", but he called them 
Olivers
- Lick's vision was continued after he retired by his "chief of staff" 
at MIT, Al Vezza, who convinced Tim Berners-Lee to come to MIT and lead 
the W3C from there.  This happened too late to be covered in Waldrop's 
book.  The Web was an important component of Lick's vision and W3C was a 
means to drive its evolution.  Al used to be my boss and he contacted me 
to get Oracle to join W3C as a Founding Member and I served as the 
corporate representative.

There were a lot of people involved in the early years of what is now 
The Internet, and this book describes a lot of the interactions and 
behind the scenes activity that was involved.  Again, I highly recommend 
it.  I found that the parts of the book that describe things that 
happened while I was "in the room" are quite accurate and often explain 
the "why" of things I remember happening but never knew the full story.

/Jack Haverty





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