This is an interesting essay in that it was written by one of the architects (Licklider) of the network that would become the Internet.Licklider and Taylor (L &T) outline a simple interaction between computers and users. However, they do not seem to be claiming that this "communication system" would assume a role more than facilitating and fostering communication and ideas: “… the computer alone can make no contribution that will help us, and that the computer with the programs and the data it has today can do little more than suggest a direction and provide a few germinal example” (28).
To pick up on one of the themes I found in the earlier readings, L & T seem to move well beyond the positivism that Wells expressed in imagining a system of interconnected information. In fact, L & T seem to directly bridge the void that Wells left in his description of the universal encyclopedia: “Society rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single mind. Society demands consensus, agreement, at least majority… The requirement is for communication, which we now define concisely as ‘cooperative modeling’—cooperation in the construction, maintenance, and use of a model” (22).
L & T are imaging fully integrated information systems in which knowledge could be created – not the singular and stand-alone computers as processors or repositories of existing information. Like the Internet we know today, their distributed system relies on complete computers connected to a network by a conventional network interface. This is in direct contrast to the computing systems Ceruzzi’s described. Most importantly, L & T are imagining a distributed computing environment that is managed through economies of scale – the production of commodity hardware, compared to the lower efficiency of designing and constructing a small number of custom, self-contained computing environments.
A nice brief essay that illustrates the vision of the people behind our modern technology-enhanced interconnected world.
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