J. C. R. Licklider : biography
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J.C.R. or "Lick" was an American computer scientist and psychologistMiller G. A. (1991) ‘J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist’, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 89, Issue 4B, pp. 1887-1887 considered one of the most important figures in computer science and general computing history. He is particularly remembered for being one of the first to foresee modern-style interactive computing, and its application to all manner of activities; and also as an Internet pioneer, with an early vision of a world-wide computer network long before it was built. He did much to actually initiate all that through his funding of research which led to a great deal of it, including today’s canonical graphical user interface, and the ARPANET, the direct predecessor to the Internet.
He has been called "computing’s Johnny Appleseed", for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age. Robert Taylor, founder of Xerox PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center, noted that "most of the significant advances in computer technology—including the work that my group did at Xerox PARC—were simply extrapolations of Lick’s vision. They were not really new visions of their own. So he was really the father of it all."
For people who only know today’s computerized-information-rich world, the change from what came before, and thus his impact on the world (since his ideas, and the work of people he sponsored, has led, directly and indirectly, to much of it), is probably hard to truly fathom. This quotation from the full length biography of him, The Dream Machine, gives some sense of it:
- "More than a decade will pass before personal computers emerge from the garages of Silicon Valley, and a full thirty years before the Internet explosion of the 1990s. The word computer still has an ominous tone, conjuring up the image of a huge, intimidating device hidden away in an overlit, air-conditioned basement, relentlessly processing punch cards for some large institution: them.
- "Yet, sitting in a non-descript office in McNamara’s Pentagon, a quiet .. civilian is already planning the revolution that will change forever the way computers are perceived. Somehow, the occupant of that office .. has seen a future in which computers will empower individuals, instead of forcing them into rigid conformity. He is almost alone in his conviction that computers can become not just superfast calculating machines, but joyful machines: tools that will serve as new media of expression, inspirations to creativity, and gateways to a vast world of online information."Waldrop, op. cit., dust jacket
Biography
Licklider was born March 11, 1915, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA., retrieved online: 2009-05-19 He was the only child of Joseph Parron Licklider, a Baptist minister, and Margaret Robnett Licklider., A Biographical Memoir by Robert M. Fano, National Academies Press, Washington D.C., 1998 Despite his father’s religious background, he was not religious in later life. He displayed early engineering talent, building model airplanes. He carried on with his hobby of refurbishing automobiles throughout his life.
He studied at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received a BA in 1937, majoring in physics, mathematics and psychology, and an MA in psychology in 1938. He received a PhD in psychoacoustics from the University of Rochester in 1942, and worked at the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University from 1943 to 1950.
He became interested in information technology, and moved to MIT in 1950 as an associate professor, where he served on a committee that established MIT Lincoln Laboratory and established a psychology program for engineering students.
In 1957 he received the Franklin V. Taylor Award from the Society of Engineering Psychologists. In 1958, he was elected President of the Acoustical Society of America, and in 1990 he received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service.