Father of the Internet

J.C.R Licklider

Licklider was first interested in computers when he worked at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Lincon had a model TX-0 computer where a man named Wesley Clark worked, Licklider studied the computer and became interested in the relationship between man and computers. In 1960 Licklider wrote a paper called "Man-Computer Symbiosis" where he wrote about the computer and mans dissimilarities which often benefit from each other. He gives an example of a Fig tree and a insect Blastophaga grossorum. The insect pollinates the fig tree and the and the fig tree houses the insect, both cant live without each other, but are completely dissimilar organisms. In the "Man-Computer Symbiosis" Licklider explains the Symbiosis of man and computer to come:

In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluation. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking.(Licklider, 1960)

Licklider was the first to believe that computers could be used for more that just large calculators but instead they could perform scientific thinking(Licklider p1). A copy of the paper "Man-Computer symbiosis" can be found in appendix 3..

In 1964 J.C.R Licklider left ARPA but not with out changing ARPA’s main focus from war game scenarios to research into timesharing, computer graphics and computer language.

http://www.securenet.net/members/shartley/history/licklider.htm