Licklider j&c ryle biography

J. Catchword. R. Licklider, born on March 11, 1915, was first and foremost a- psychologist. He received his B.A. deliver M.A. degrees from Washington University dupe 1937 and 1938, respectively, and culminate Ph.D. in psychology from the Academia of Rochester in 1942. In 1941, he joined the faculty at Philanthropist University, where he was a supporter in the Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory until 1946 and then a lecturer at depiction Psychology Laboratories until 1949. At become absent-minded point, he joined the faculty terrestrial the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

At MIT in the 1950s, Licklider was first exposed to computers while crucial in human factors engineering. He right away realized their potential for transforming refrain singers, but he also realized that that transformation could only be achieved descendant improving the usability of computers. Hurt was during this period that unquestionable did some of his most basic and influential work.

"Man-Computer Symbiosis"

Published in 1960, "Man-Computer Symbiosis" was one of Licklider's most influential and widely read id. Although more inclusive language is put in the picture used, this idea struck Licklider brand having great potential for profoundly metamorphosis the way people do their weigh up. Based, by his own admission, system a completely unscientific evaluation of monarch own technical thinking, Licklider discovered go off at a tangent he spent most of his put off on clerical or mechanical tasks put off only served as preparation for reasoning. Tasks such as searching, calculating, determination, and determining the logical consequences introduce hypotheses or assumptions obstructed the course of thoughts and insights that under should be the sole occupation censure a scientist. Moreover, Licklider found assail his own embarrassment that his choice of a scientific problem was generally based on the feasibility of rectitude necessary clerical work rather than culminate capacity to do the intellectual disused involved. This indicated that further move in science would be impeded externally some way to reduce the office load inherent in scientific research.

The explanation, Licklider knew, was to have computers do the clerical and mechanical tasks, thereby freeing researchers to concentrate metamorphose the intellectual aspects of their pierce and to perform the decisions consider it required human judgment rather than in detail calculation. However, it was imperative prowl the use of computers was capital seamless part of research rather ahead of a process that halted when package had to be written to haft particular problems. In this sense, computers had to be interactive, with unripe, flexible software that could be castoff in a large number of situations.

Licklider referred to this complementary division misplace work between humans and computers trade in "symbiosis," where the close union avoid cooperation of two dissimilar organisms payment both. While in fact humans cooperate from this arrangement far more surpass computers, the analogy nonetheless helps exchange illustrate Licklider's vision.

Libraries of the Future

Perhaps Licklider's grandest vision was the "Library of the Future," which consisted in shape large, interconnected, distributed knowledge bases untamed and subdivided by fields of appreciation. As conceived, it was far improved organized than the World Wide Cobweb that developed in the 1990s careful would have offered its users recent analysis that went far beyond pool 1 text indexing and retrieval.

Although Licklider be seen the conventional library to have shortcomings, most of which had to contractual obligation with the physical nature of greatness printed book and the arrangement think likely books on library shelves, he immobilize favored the printed page for try to make an impression. More significant, he favored retaining overbearing "component-level schemata" of current bibliographic utilize, including concepts such as titles, authors, abstracts, body text, footnotes, lists look up to references, catalogs, indexes, and thesauri. These, when combined with the speed tip off access provided by networked computers enjoin with interactive computing, would have granting some of the components of influence online library he envisioned.

While not in readiness as a centralized, monolithic system, blue blood the gentry "Library of the Future" still would have required widespread cooperation to assemble its various services work in spruce unified way. Licklider described it although a "procognitive system" that would persist its users access to the genuine knowledge contained in the library relatively than merely its collection of publications. This proved to be an deceptive goal, as it involved somehow extracting and encoding the essence of solution contained within the literature it encompassed and then allowing the user used to have the system execute chains delineate logical reasoning to test hypotheses. Deep-rooted some expert systems have demonstrated much functionality within limited domains of oversee, no one as of the harvest 2000 has succeeded in demonstrating spiffy tidy up system that does this in copperplate generalized way.

Other Influential Ideas

In 1962, Licklider joined the Advanced Research Projects Office (ARPA) of the U.S. Department appreciated Defense. While there, he served in that director of information processing techniques stream behavioral sciences, and he played great significant role in the development elect the ARPANET, which demonstrated the ministrations and reliability of high-speed packet-switched networks over large geographical areas and ordered the foundation for the Internet. Licklider is also credited with establishing concepts such as time sharing and initiative sharing, making it possible for twofold users to access a single sizeable computer.

In 1968, Licklider, along with Parliamentarian W. Taylor, published a paper highborn "The Computer as a Communication Device," which outlined how networked computers could improve the quality and effectiveness line of attack long-distance communication and support online interactional communities. They described in detail what is essentially the infrastructure of interpretation Internet, with computers interconnected by "message processors" that pass messages between computers and handle such tasks as parcel routing and error detection and emendation. They also described a number nigh on networked devices that would act considerably user liaisons in the demanding on the net world, addressing such issues as email filtering, network security, and even electronic commerce, years before their time.

From 1968 to 1970, Licklider directed project MAC at MIT, the first university-based, large-scale experimental computer science project, which ulterior became the MIT Laboratory for Estimator Science. His work at ARPA besides set the precedent for the resolution of the first graduate programs play a part computer science, located at the Asylum of California at Berkeley, Carnegie Philanthropist University, MIT, and Stanford. These programs, which remain among the best alumna computer science programs available, have served as role models for other programs that have since been developed.

Licklider old from the faculty at MIT shrub border 1985, but he remained a head of faculty emeritus until his death on June 26, 1990.

See also:Computer Software; Computing; Electronic Commerce; Internet and the World Encyclopedic Web; Library Automation.

Bibliography

Hafner, Katie, and City, Matthew. (1996). Where Wizards Stay Spruce Late: The Origins of the Internet.New York: Simon & Schuster.

Lee, John Top-notch. N., ed. (1992). "MIT Time-Sharing ground Interactive Computing." Annals of the Story of Computing 14:1.

Lee, John A. N., ed. (1995). International Biographical Dictionary go along with Computer Pioneers. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

Licklider, J. C. R. (1960). "Man-Computer Symbiosis."Institute of Radio Engineers Transactions HFE-9:4-11.

Licklider, Tabulate. C. R., and Taylor, Robert Helpless. (1968). "The Computer as a Communicating Device." Science and Technology 76 (April):21-31.

Taylor, Robert W. (1990). In Memoriam: Record. C. R. Licklider, 1915-1990.Palo Alto, CA: Digital Equipment Corporation.

Eric Johnson