Looking Back On Three Decades Of Internet History

Looking Back ... Building a Trail of Interest A Galactic Network
Creating an Electronic Quilt Incalculable Impact

A Galactic Network

A decade and a half later, Dr. J. C. R. Licklider, one of the most visionary computer scientists of his day, took another leap with his predictions of a "Galactic Network" linking everyone to a universe of information. In a later paper titled "The Computer as a Communication Device," he and Robert W. Taylor, who would go on to direct the Arpanet project, imagined nothing less than "a labile network of networks, ever-changing in both content and configuration."

"What will go on inside?" they asked. "Eventually, every informational transaction of sufficient consequence to warrant the cost. Each secretary's typewriter, each data-gathering instrument, each dictation machine, will feed into the network."

There would be no need for letters, telegrams, telephone calls or even business trips. People would simply link their computers. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, investment advice, tax counseling, advanced scientific modeling programs -- all would be available within the Net.

On-line communities would form with people selected "more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity." And, more ominously, the two researchers speculated, those denied the benefits of this "intelligence amplification" might be relegated to an information-deprived underclass. Both the bright and dark sides of today's Internet were anticipated years before the first message was sent.

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data link, October 1999.
data link acknowledges the source of this article, HPCwire, the electronic news magazine for high-performance computing. Used with permission.