On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 10:40 AM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Dave Horsfall
>
>     > We lost ... on this day
>
> An email from someone on a related topic has reminded me of someone else
> you
> should make sure is only your list (not sure if you already have him):
> J. C. R. Licklider; we lost him on June 26, 1990.
>
> He didn't write much code himself, but the work of people he funded (e.g.
> Doug Engelbart, the ARPANet guys, Multics, etc, etc, etc) to work on his
> vision has led to today's computerized, information-rich world. For people
> who
> only know today's networked world, the change from what came before, and
> thus
> his impact on the world (since his ideas and the work of people he
> sponsored
> led, directly and indirectly, to much of it), is probably hard to truly
> fathom.
>
> He is, in my estimation, one of the most important and influential computer
> scientists of all. I wonder how many computer science people had more of an
> impact; the list is surely pretty short. Babbage; Turing; who else?
>

Perhaps I've mentioned this short movie from 1971 before, but it's well
worth a watch: "Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing" (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjZ7ktIlSM0)

Licklider, Khan and other players from the early days of the ARPAnet figure
prominently. It's amazingly prescient.

        - Dan C.