J.C.R.
Licklider
Much
like Vannevar Bush, J.C.R. Licklider's contribution
to th
e
development of the Internet consists of ideas not inventions. He foresaw
the need for networked computers with easy user interfaces. His ideas
foretold of graphical computing, point-and -click interfaces, digital
libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and software that would exist
on a network and migrate to wherever it was needed. He has been called,
"Computing's Johnny Appleseed," a well-deserved nickname for a man
who planted the seeds of computing in the digital age. (Waldrop,
2000).
Licklider planted his metaphorical seeds at two very important places.
Most importantly, he worked for several years at ARPA where he set
the stage for the creation of the ARPANET. He also worked at Bolt
Beranek and Newman (BBN) the company that supplied the first computers
connected on the ARPANET.
"Lick"
Licklider
was called"Lick" by everyone who knew him. He was well-liked and had
a reputation for being humble almost to a fault, often letting others
take credit for his ideas as long as they were accomplished. His modesty
and good manners were probably part of his mid-western upbringing.
Lick was born in St. Louis in 1915.He attended Washington State University
in St. Louis where he received three bachelor's degrees in physics,
math, and psychology. He did his doctoral work in psychoacoustics
(the psychophysiology of the auditory system). In 1942, he went to
work at Harvard's Psychoacoustics Laboratory where he did work for
the Air Force to find solutions for the communication problems faced
by crewman in noisy bomber aircraft.
In
1950, Lick moved to MIT where he got his first real taste of computing.
He worked on a Cold War project called SAGE designed to create computer-based
air defense systems against Soviet bombers. Lick became increasingly
interested in computing thereafter. Coming to the world of computing
from a psychology background gave Lick a unique perspective. Computing
at the time consisted mainly of batch-processing operations. Large
problems would be outlined in advance and operations coded onto paper
punch cards which were then fed into computers in large batches. Technicians
then waited for the results.
The
whole process was very time-consuming and if any of the variables
changed or were not planned for in the beginning the process had to
be repeated. Lick had seen that computing could be different when
he worked on the SAGE project. The SAGE computer worked in real time.
Information was fed into the machine and it produced results almost
immediately. Lick believed computer development had to proceed more
in that direction in order for computers to become really useful.
Man
Computer Symbiosis
In
1960, Licklider published his groundbreaking work "Man
Computer Symbiosis." The main idea of the paper was that computers
should be developed with the goal "to enable men and computers to
cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without
inflexible dependence on predetermined programs" (Licklider).
Lick was, of course, thinking about real time interactive computing.
Computers would effectively and quickly do routine work. Processing
speed and easy user interfaces would allow humans to interact with
computers in making decisions instead of simply responding to long-awaited
output. This way of computing would mean that problems would not have
to be formulated in depth in advance because computers would be able
to respond to changing variables. Lick's proposed system would not
use the traditional batch processing methods, but rather the time
sharing method, which gives many users at individual terminals access
to a large mainframe. Users thus interact directly with the computer
instead of relying on technicians and punch cards. Results are obtained
immediately.
Man Computer Symbiosis was inspired by an informal experiment Lick
conducted with himself as the subject. He decided to keep track of
how he spent his time at work:
"About
85 per cent of my "thinking" time was spent getting into a position
to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know.
Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into
digesting it. Hours went into the plotting of graphs, and other
hours into instructing an assistant how to plot. When the graphs
were finished, the relations were obvious at once, but the plotting
had to be done in order to make them so. At one point, it was necessary
to compare six experimental determinations of a function relating
speech-intelligibility to speech-to-noise ratio. No two experimenters
had used the same definition or measure of speech-to-noise ratio.
Several hours of calculating were required to get the data into
comparable form. When they were in comparable form, it took only
a few seconds to determine what I needed to know.
"Throughout
the period I examined, in short, my "thinking" time was devoted
mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical:
searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the
logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses,
preparing the way for a decision or an insight. Moreover, my choices
of what to attempt and what not to attempt were determined to an
embarrassingly great extent by considerations of clerical feasibility,
not intellectual capability." (Licklider).
Man
computer symbiosis would augment human intellect by freeing it from
mundane tasks. This idea may not seem revolutionary in today's world
of ubiquitous personal computers, but in the days of batch processing
it was. The fact that Man Computer Symbiosis was written be a newcomer
to the field of computer science made it even more amazing. Robert
Rosin, a computer science student at MIT who had taken one of Lick's
psychology courses in 1956 recalls, " For the life of me, I could
not imagine how a psychologist who, in 1956, had no apparent knowledge
of computers, could have written such a profound and insightful paper
about 'my field' in 1960," (Rosin
in Hafner & Lyon, 35).
Lick
at BBN
In
1957, Lick went to work for Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), an architectural
acoustics design firm. He persuaded them to buy a $25,000 computer.
Lick was not sure what they would do with the computer, but knew there
were potential uses. BBN soon after acquired a second computer, a
Digital Equipment PDP-1 for $150,000. Lick began hiring young talented
computer engineers to the BBN staff. The
company began focusing more and more on computers and earned a reputation
as a computer consultant firm. In 1968, ARPA began accepting bids
to build the first computers that would compose the ARPANET. BBN was
positioned to bid and they won, thanks to Lick's earlier influence.
Lick
at ARPA
In
1962, Jack Ruina, director of ARPA, asked Lick to head up two ARPA
departments: Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control (which deals
with making timely decisions and having them carried out by forces
in the field). As an added incentive he would have a Large computer,
a Q-32, at his disposal. The Air Force had acquired the computer but
then given it to ARPA in 1961. One of Lick's main tasks would be to
find better uses for computers other than numerical calculation.
Lick
sought out the leading computer research institutions in the U.S.
and set up research contracts with them. Soon there were about a dozen
universities and companies working on ARPA contracts including Stanford,
UCLA, and Berkeley. Lick jokingly nicknamed his group the Intergalactic
Computer Network. This group would later form the core who created
the ARPANET.
In
1963, Lick wrote a memo to members of the Intergalactic Computer Group
making a case for standardization among the various computer systems
used by members of the group. Lick wanted the researchers to be able
to build upon each others' work. Their physical distances from each
other and incompatible computer systems made this difficult. If the
various computers could be connected researchers could easily communicate
data between them. Lick was proposing a network. "It will possibly
turn out that only an rare occasions do most or all of the computers
in the overall system operate together in an integrated network. It
seems to me important, nevertheless, to develop a capability for integrated
network operation" (Lick in Hafner
& Lyon, 38).
Lick
went on to further describe his hypothetical network:
"If such
a network as I envisage nebulously could be brought into operation,
we could have at least four large computers, perhaps six or eight
small computers, and a great assortment of disc files and magnetic
tape units-not to mention remote consoles and teletype stations-all
churning away" (Lick in Waldrop)
He even described software that would exist only on the network and
could be used by any connected machine when needed. This idea was
realized decades later with the creation of JAVA.
Lick never implemented his vision. He left ARPA the next year, but
in a few years his ideas were implemented with creation of the ARPANET.
Larry Roberts, the principal architect
of the ARAPNET, later recalled the importance of lick's ideas:
"Lick had
this concept of the intergalactic network which he believed was
everybody could use computers anywhere and get at data anywhere
in the world. He didn't envision the number of computers we have
today by any means, but he had the same concept-all of the stuff
linked together throughout the world, that you can use a remote
computer, get data from a remote computer, or use lots of computers
in your job. The vision was really Lick's originally. None oof us
can really claim to have seen that before him nor{can} anybody in
the world. Lick saw this vision in the early sixties. He didn't
have a clue how to build it. He didn't have any idea how to make
this happen. But he knew it was important, so he sat down with me
and really convinced me that it was important and convinced me into
making it happen" (Roberts in
Segaller, 40).
Lick
had definitely left his mark on ARPA. When he had arrived, the Command
and Control Research Department had focused on computer-simulated
war games. He changed the focus to research in time-sharing, computer
graphics, and improved computer languages. The name of the office
was changed to reflect its new focus. Its new name was the Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). The changes brought about by
Lick set the stage for the creation of the ARPANET only a few years
after he left.
Libraries
of the Future
Lick
continued to envision great uses for computers. In 1965, he wrote
a book called Libraries of the Future, in which he discussed how information
could be stored and retrieved electronically. (Although he had not
read Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think," he realized that Bush's ideas
had been diffused through the computing community enough to have provided
a base for his own ideas (Licklider
1965, xii). His theoretical information network, which he called
a "procognitive system" sounds remarkably similar to Tim Berners-Lee's
World Wide Web: "the concept of a 'desk' may have changed from passive
to active: a desk may be primarily a display-and-control station in
a telecommunication-telecomputation system-and its most vital part
may be the cable ('umbilical cord') that connects it, via a wall socket,
into the procognitive utility net" (Licklider
1965, 33). This system could be used to connect the user to: "everyday
business, industrial, government, and professional information, and
perhaps, also to news, entertainment, and education."(Licklider
1965, 34).
J.C.R
Licklider's ideas had a profound effect on the development of 
computer
technology and the development of the Internet. He had a vision of
man computer symbiosis whereby human intellect could be augmented.
He instilled that vision in others who implemented them. Naturally
quiet and humble, Licklider never achieved any great amount of fame
or widespread recognition. He died in 1990 from complication from
an asthma attack.
For
Further Reading
Dream
Machine, The : J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing
Personal
Home|
Vannevar Bush | J.C.R.
Licklider | Larry Roberts | Paul
Baran |
Bob Metcalfe |
Doug Engelbart | Vint Cerf | Ted
Nelson | Tim Berners-Lee |
Marc Andreesen | Epilogue |
References |
