"Cybernetics, Time-sharing, Human-Computer Symbiosis and On-line Communities:The Pioneering Vision for the Global Computer Network by Ronda Hauben Part I - Foundations of the Cybernetic Revolution In 1961 MIT was to celebrate its centennial anniversary. Martin Greenberger, who had joined the MIT faculty in 1958, describes how a call went out for interesting ways to celebrate. In response, "I proposed a series of lectures," he recalled, "on the computer and the future."(1) "We threw open the hatches," he remembered, "and got together the best people we could assemble -- whatever their fields. We asked these thinkers to project ahead and help us understand what was in store."(2) Charles Percy Snow, a British scientist and author, was one of the invited speakers. In his talk on the need for democratic and broad based participation in the decisions of society, he observed, "We happen to be living at a time of a major scientific revolution, probably more important in its consequences, than the first Industrial Revolution which we shall see in full force in the very near future."(3) The pioneers at this conference expressed their concern that the challenges of the computer be understood and taken seriously. They cautioned that the computer represented a significant but difficult challenge to our society. They felt that government decisions regarding the development and application of the computer needed to be entrusted to people who understood the depth of the arguments regarding the problems they were dealing with. Also, they were concerned that the smaller the number of people involved in important social decisions, the more likely it would be that serious errors of judgment would be made. Thus they expressed their support for opening up the decision making process to as broad a set of people as possible. Present at this gathering were several of the pioneers who had helped to set the foundation for the developing cybernetic revolution. What was the revolution they were describing? In an article published in "Scientific American" in 1972, John Pierce of AT&T, who had been one of the speakers at the gathering at MIT, described the theoretical foundations of the developing revolution. He wrote that "In 1948, two publications" appeared which created "an intellectual stir which has not yet subsided."(4) He identified the works as "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon which was published in the July and October 1948 issues of the "Bell System Technical Journal," and Norbert Wiener's book "Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine." Describing Shannon's contribution, John Pierce explained that Shannon had changed communication theory from guess work to science. Perce wrote: "Shannon has made it possible for comunication engineers to distinguish between what is possible and what is not possible. Communication theory has disposed of unworkable inventions that are akin to perpetual motion machines. It has directed the attention of engineers to real and soluble problems. It has given them a quantative measure of the effectiveness of their system. Shannon's work has also inspired the invention of many error-correcting codes, by means of which one can attain error free transmission over noisy communication channels."(5) The mathematician and computer pioneer, Alan Turing, had determined that it was possible to design a universal or general purpose computer that could solve any calculation that could be solved by a machine, provided the computer had a program describing the calculation. Shannon had built on Turing's contribution showing how Boolean algebra and logic could be used in the analysis and synthesis of switching and computer circuits. John Pierce's article summarized the contribution of Norbert Wiener to the development of the new science of cybernetics. Wiener's work, Pierce explained, had to do with the means by which needed feedback is communicated to help correct problems that develop in an organism. Pierce described how the need to know what is wrong in a process is crucial to its health.(6) Pierce noted the important intellectual catalyst that Wiener's book "Cybernetics" created when it appeared in 1948. In his book "Cybernetics," Wiener defined three central concepts to define the crucial issues in any organism or system: communication, control and feedback. Wiener coined the term "cybernetics" to designate the important role that feedback plays in a communication system. He took the word from the Greek term "kybernetes" meaning "governor" or "steersman" explaining that the feedback mechanism is essential. He explained, "In choosing this term, we wish to recognize that the first significant paper on feedback mechanisms is an article on governors, which was published by Clerk Maxwell in 1868....We also wish to refer to the fact that the steering engines of a ship are indeed one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms."(7) Explaining his theory and the importance of accurate information and feedback, Wiener, in an interview in 1959, explained: "It is like driving a car and, instead of seeing where you are going, somebody puts a picture in front of you. Clearly, it won't be very long before you hit the curb. This is true in other spheres. Facing the contingencies of life depends on adequate and true information. The more that information is conditioned by the people who are doing the controlling, the less they will be able to meet emergencies. In the long run, such a system of misinformation can only lead to catastrophe."(8) Wiener believed that the digital computer had raised the question of the relationship between the human and the machine, and that it is necessary to explore that relationship in a scientific manner. He wrote that what "functions should properly be assigned to these two agencies" is the crucial question for our times.(9) Crucial to Wiener's vision was that the more complex the machine, like the developing digital computer, the more, not less, direction and intelligence were required on the part of its human partner. Wiener often pointed to the literal way in which the computer interpreted the data provided to it. He explained the necessity for increased human guidance and forethought when directing computers to do work. He wrote: "Here I must enter a protest against the popular understanding of computing machines and similar quasimechanical aids. Many people suppose that they are replacements for intelligence and have cut down the need for original thought....People imagine that by throwing a great bulk of data together significant results will come out automatically. This is not the case. If simple devices need simple thought to get the most out of them, complicated devices need a vastly reinforced level of thought....Moreover, this work cannot be put off until the machines have already processed their data. It is very rare, and to say the least, by no means normal, that data that has been thoughtlessly selected can be organized by an after thought so as to produce significant results."(10) In his introduction to his book "Cybernetics," Wiener describes some of the important influences on his development as a scientist and on his thinking in the field of cybernetics. He writes about how in the 1930's, he was invited to attend a series of private seminars on the scientific method held by Dr. Arturo Rosenblueth at the Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA. Wiener maintains that he and Dr. Rosenblueth "shared in common an interest in scientific methodology" and they also both believed that "science should be a collaborative effort."(11) Scientists involved in a variety of fields of study were invited to the seminars to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of communication in machine and animals that participants in the seminars explored. Describing the methology of the seminars, Wiener writes: "In those days, Dr. Rosenblueth...conducted a monthly series of discussion meetings on scientific method. The participants were mostly young scientists at the Harvard Medical School, and we would gather for dinner about a round table in Vanderbilt Hall. The conversation was lively and unrestrained. It was not a place where it was either encouraged or made possible for anyone to stand on his dignity. After the meal, somebody -- either one of our group or an invited guest -- would read a paper on some scientific topic, generally one in which questions of methodology were the first consideration, or at least a leading consideration. The speaker had to run the gauntlet of an acute criticism, good-natured but unsparing. It was a perfect catharsis for half-baked ideas, insufficient self- criticism, exaggerated self-confidence, and pomposity. Those who could not stand the gaff did not return, but among the former habitues of these meetings there is more than one of us who feels that they were an important and permanent contribution to our scientific unfolding."(12) Wiener writes that he was a member of this group until WWII when the confusion of the war led to the end of the seminars. After the War, however, Wiener began a set of seminars near MIT modeled on his experience in the seminars conducted by Dr. Rosenblueth. These seminars led by Norbert Wiener have been cited as an important influence in the work of some of the pioneers of cybernetics and of the developing computer revolution. Jerome Wiesner, another MIT computing pioneer, describing the important role Wiener's seminar's played in the future work at MIT in developing the RLE (Research Laboratory for Electronics) wrote: "Much of the communication work was inspired by Norbert Wiener and his exciting ideas about communication and feedback in man and machines. Wiener's theories, and those of Claude Shannon on information theory, spawned a new vision of research for everyone interested in communications, including neurophysiology, speech, and linquistics investigation. The work was both theoretical and experimental as well as basic and applied. For example, many early ideas about coding were developed in the RLE. So were broadband communications systems and the much earlier work about signal systems, as well as the interesting and exciting new ideas, such as the use of correlation functions to enhance weak signals, and the use of noise to measure system functions. The mix of new ideas and their reduction to practice remains a hallmark of the present-day RLE." Wiesner describing the seminars that Wiener set up after WWII, wrote: "In the winter of 1947, Wiener began to speak about holding a seminar that would bring together the scientists and engineers who were doing work on what he called communications. He was launching his vision of cybernetics in which he regarded signals in any medium, living or artificial, as the same; dependent on their structure and obeying a set of universal laws set out by Shannon. In the spring of 1948, Wiener convened the first of the weekly meetings that was to continue for several years. Wiener believed that good food was an essential ingredient of good conversation, so the dinner meetings were held at Joyce Chen's original restaurant, now the site of an MIT dorm. The first meeting reminded me of the tower of Babel, as engineers, psychologists, philosophers, acousticians, doctors, mathematicians, neurophysiologists, philosophers, and other interested people tried to have their say. After the first meeting, one of us would take the lead each time, giving a brief summary of his research, usually accompanied by a running discussion. As time went on, we came to understand each other's lingo and to understand, and even believe, in Wiener's view of the universal role of communications in the universe. For most of us, these dinners were a seminal experience which introduced us to both a world of new ideas and new friends, many of whom became collaborators in later years."(13) Part II - Interactive Computing, Time-sharing and Human-Computer Symbiosis The interdisciplinary and practical work of the RLE helped to set a foundation for the upcoming developments in digital computers. Also important to the future of computing was the experience that several members of the MIT community had had with a new form of computing -- interactive computing -- in their work with the Whirlwind Computer. Whirlwind research began at MIT in 1947, providing experience in digital computing. Whirlwind came on line around 1950 and was used through 1957 when the MIT Computation Center began using an IBM 704 computer. The IBM 704 was upgraded to an IBM 709 around 1959 or 1960. It was then upgraded to the first transistorized computer in that IBM family, the IBM 7090. In the meantime, the IBM System/360 family was introduced around 1965, and became the main work horse at MIT for batch processing.(14) By the end of the 1950's the method of computing common at MIT and elsewhere was a method known as batch processing. Under batch processing, the person with a program to run had to submit punch cards to a central computer center and then wait, sometimes two to four hours, sometimes days, to get a printout of the results of the computer run.(15) IBM, which was a main source of computers during this period, promoted batch processing and saw it as the form of computing for the future. Reseachers at MIT, however, had a ifferent vision. Some had worked on the Whirlwind Computer and had experienced a form of interactive computing that would allow a computer user to use the computer directly, rather than having to submit punch cards to a central computer center and await the results. The experience of real time activity at the computer had been a significant advance over the frustration of awaiting the results of one's program which was run on the batch system. Computer resources during this period were, however, very expensive. Therefore, the cost prohibited a single person from using a computer in real time. A few farsighted researchers, however, had the idea of a time-sharing system which would take advantage of the speed of the computer to allow several users to work with the computer at the same time, while the computer scheduled their different work in a way that gave the illusion that the computer was being used by each independently. In 1959, Christopher Strachey, a British researcher, gave a talk at a UNESCO conference proposing time-sharing. Also, in 1959, John McCarthy, who had joined the MIT faculty after visiting from Dartmouth, wrote a memo describing a new form of computing that time-sharing would make possible and proposing that MIT begin to plan to implement this form of computing once the IBM 7090, the new transistorized computer that they were expecting from IBM to replace the IBM 704, arrived. McCarthy advocated developing a "general-purpose system where you could program in any language you wanted."(16) In his memorandum to Professor P.M. Morse in January 1959, McCarthy writes: "This memorandum is based on the assumption that MIT will be given a transistorized IBM 709 about July 1960. I want to propose an operating system for it that will substantially reduce the time required to get a problem solved on the machine.... The proposal requires a complete revision in the way the machine is used.... I think the proposal points to the way all computers will be operated in the future, and we have a chance to pioneer a big step forward in the way computers are used."(17) At the same time as McCarthy was proposing a new form of computing, -- time-sharing and interactive computing -- another pioneer, J.C.R. Licklider, who would play an important role in the developing computer revolution, was working on a paper exploring the concept of human-computer interaction that Norbert Wiener had stressed was so crucial. Licklider had done his graduate degree in psychology and after WWII, did research at Harvard and worked as a lecturer. "At that time," he explained in an interview, "Norbert Wiener ran a circle that was very attractive to people all over Cambridge, and Tuesday nights I went to that. I got acquainted with a lot of people at MIT."(18) Licklider also described the importance to his work of the Summer Projects at MIT that he began attending in 1951. The following summer there began a series of interdisciplinary summer projects at MIT which he remarked "were so wonderful. They brought together all these people -- physicians, mathematicians. You would go one day and there would be John von Neumann, and the next day there would be Jay Forrester having the diagram of a core memory in his pocket and stuff -- it was fantastically exciting."(19) He described how he became involved with MIT and Lincoln Laboratory and "computers and radar sets and communications. They had a token psychologist," he noted, "just one; you need a lot of physicists and mathematicians and engineers, and stuff. So it was a fantastic opportunity." The lab he worked at was run by RLE and he described how it "gave me a kind of access to the most marvelous electronics there was." By 1958-9, Licklider was working with Bolt Beranek and Newman doing acoustical research. There he had access to digital computers, first a Royal McBee LGP-30, and then a DEC PDP-1 (the prototype). Licklider learned how to program on the LGP-30 and when the PDP-1 arrived, one of the earliest time sharing systems was created for it, and Licklider had a grand timexploring what it made possible. Describing this period, Licklider explained: "Well, it turned out that these guys at MIT and BBN. We'd all gotten really excited about interactive computing and we had a kind of little religion growing here about how this was going to be totally different from batch processing." During this period, Licklider carried out an experiment to try to determine how the computer could aid him in his intellectual work. "More significantly," he explained, "from my point of view, a lot hinged on a little study I had made on how I would spend my time. It showed that almost all my time was spent on algorithmic things that were no fun, but they were all necessary for the few heuristic things that seemed to be important. I had this little picture in my mind of how we were going to get people and computers to really think together."(20) Also, Licklider described how he tried to set up a Wiener like circle to conduct a study for the Air Force. He explains: "Oh, yes. We had a project with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop the systems concept. Now it's corny, but then it was an interesting concept. We were trying to figure out what systems meant to the engineer and the scientific world. That involved some meetings in which we brought [together] good thinkers in several fields. We wanted a kind of Wiener circle....we put a lot of hours into trying to do that."(21) This study is described in the article "Man-Computer Symbiosis" (IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics," volume HFE-1, pgs 4-11, March 1960) by Licklider. Norbert Wiener had proposed that man-computer symbiosis was a subset of the man- computer relationship. Licklider took that observation seriously and wrote an article published in March 1960 exploring the meaning and import of man-computer interaction and interdependence. "Man-computer symbiosis," he wrote, "is an expected development in cooperative interaction between man and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and electronic members of the partnership. The main aims," he outlined, "are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable man and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs."(22) The paper became an important and pathbreaking formulation of a vision of computing that set the basis for the developing computer revolution in time-sharing and networking. Licklider did not promote the computer as a replacement for humans nor see humans as servants to computers. Instead he proposed that research was needed to explore the role of each in the effort to have a symbiotic relationship between the human and computer partners that would aid intellectual activity. Part III - CTSS and Project MAC One of those who was to play an important role in implementing the vision of human-computer symbiosis was Robert Fano. Robert Fano worked at RLE after doing his Ph.D. at MIT in June 1947. In his introduction to his book on "Transmission of Information" published by the MIT press, he described his early contact with Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon. He explains how he took seriously theoretical questions raised by Wiener and Shannon and went on to do research to help explore the theory they had pioneered. By 1960, Fano was a senior faculty member at MIT. Gordon Brown, then Dean of the Engineering School of MIT, arranged for several faculty members to take a course in computing taught by Fernando Corbato and John McCarthy. Fano, remembering his excitement in taking their course recalled, "I wrote a program that worked." (23) Gordon Brown, Fano explained, understood that the computer was going to be very important and encouraged his senior faculty to become familiar with it. In 1960, the MIT administration appointed a committee to make recommendations about the future needs of MIT regarding computers. Fano was one of the faculty members appointed to the committee. This committee created a technical committee made up of Fernando Corbato, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Doug Ross, Jack Dennis, with Herb Teager acting as Chair. In Spring of 1961, the celebration of the MIT centennial described earlier in this paper, was held. There were eight talks planned, and when one of the speakers cancelled at the last minute, John McCarthy from The Long Range Planning Committee was invited to speak. In his talk, McCarthy described the rationale behind time sharing and the important vision for the future of computing that it represented. Other participants at the conference included Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, John Kemeny, Robert Fano, Alan Perlis, and J.C.R. Licklider.(24) In the course of the conference, Wiener explained that "a computing machine is a general-purpose device that can be programmed to do very specific jobs." But, Wiener warned, if you fail to give a necessary instruction to a computer, "you cannot expect the machine itself to think of this restriction."(25) Wiener explained that humans had to oversee the computer. "An unsafe act thus," Wiener cautioned, "may not show its danger until it is too late to do anything about it."(26) J.C.R. Licklider described how a human being "must not so clutter his mind with codes and formats that he cannot think about his substantative problem."(27) In his comments as a discussant at the Conference, Licklider described his vision of the future of the computer: "In due course it will be part of the formulation of problems; part of real-time thinking, problem solving, doing of research, conducting of experiments, getting into the literature and finding references...And it will mediate and facilitate communication among human beings."(28) He expressed his hope that the computer "through its contribution to formulative thinking...will help us understand the structure of ideas, the nature of intellectual processes."(29) And he proposed that the "most important present function of the digital computer in the university should be to catalyze the development of computer science."(30) A participant at the conference, the linquist Y. Bar-Hillel, pointed out that with regard to computer development, no one at the conference knew what was going to happen in the long term future, or even in the short term. Because of this uncertainty, he maintained that it was important to decide what type of future it would be worthwhile to encourage. He observed that there were two paths to choose from and posed the question as to which path should be taken. "Do we want computers that will compete with human beings and achieve intelligent behavior autonomously, or do we want what has been called man-machine symbiosis?"(31) "I think computer people have the obligation to decide which of the two aims they are going to adopt," he proposed. He recommended that the best path was that of man-machine symbiosis because he held that the human brain was more developed than it would be possible to make a machine brain at the current stage of technological development. "I admit that these two aims do not definitely exclude each other," he acknowledged. However, he added, "but there has been an enormous waste during the last few years in trying to achieve what I regard as the wrong aim at this stage, namely, computers that will autonomously work as well as the human brain with its billion years of evolution." Robert Fano went on a sabbatical in the Summer of 1961 to Lincoln Labs because he hoped to learn more about digital computers there. "I had become convinced," he explained, "that one ought to start thinking about communications no longer in the form of `How can I put together certain communication components, like an amplifier, or oscillaor to make a communication system'."(32) Instead he felt one had to think about communication in the general purpose way that the digital computer was making possible. In the meantime, the Long Term Computation Study Group published its reports. There were two proposals for how to proceed. One, from Herbert Teager, who had been Chairman of the Committee, and a second Report from the rest of the committee. Fernando Corbato, a member of the committee and then Associate Director of the MIT Computing Center set out to implement an "interim" solution to the kind of computer the majority report proposed. Corbato describes the subsequent events, "I started up with just a couple of my staff people Marjorie Daggett...and Bob Daley. We hammered out a very primitive prototype. We started thinking about it in Spring of 1961. I remember that by the summer of 1961 we were in the heat of trying to work out the intricacies of the interrupts."(33) He explains how he and the other programmers were acting on the vision that had been developed by the majority of the Long Term Study Group Committee. "I sketched out what we would try to do," he explains, "and Marjorie, Daley and I worked out the hairy details of trying to cope with this kind of poor hardware. By November, 1961," he notes, "we were able to demonstrate a really crude prototype of the system. What we had done was [that] we had wedged out 5K words of the user address space and inserted a little operating system that was going to manage the four typewriters. We did not have any disk storage, so we took advantage of the fact that it was a large machine and we had a lot of tape drives. We assigned one tape drive per typewriter." (34) They gave a seminar and demonstration with their crude operating system in November 1961. "That's the date that's branded in my mind," Corbato notes. "It was only a four-Flexowriter system. People were pleased that there were finally examples surfacing from [the work]. They did not view [it-ed] as an answer to anybody's problem. We made the [first] demo in November 1961 on an [IBM] 709," he recalls. "The switch to the [IBM] 7090 occurred in the spring of 1962 at the Computation Center."(35) Corbato describes how CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System) as the operating system he was working on was called, couldn't go into operation until the programmers made massive changes. It was only when the IBM 7090 hardware could be used and had arrived in early spring of 1962 that they could begin to deal with the real problems to make a working system. Corbato gave a talk at a Conference about CTSS in May, 1962, but they still didn't have a working system running. However, by October, 1962, J.C.R. Licklider had accepted a position with ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) under the U.S. Department of Defense on the condition that he would be allowed to implement the vision of interactive computing and time sharing. In November, 1962, Licklider and Fano both attended an unclassified meeting held for the Air Force in Hot Springs, Virginia, Fano had been invited to chair a session on Communications. And he and Licklider both attended some of the sessions on command and control. On the way back from the conference, on the train returning to Washington D.C., several people from the meeting were in the same car. They all chatted about what had happened and moved from seat to seat to talk to different people. "And I did spend quite a bit of time with Lick," Fano recalled, "and I understood better what he had in mind."(36) Fano spent Thanksgiving Day 1962 thinking over the discussion he had had with Licklider. The day after Thanksgiving he had a meeting set up with the Provost at MIT, Charlie Townes. When he told the Provost what he had been thinking, he was told "Go ahead." Fano wrote out his thoughts in a 2 page memorandum that he distributed broadly arod MIT. In the proposal he put forward three goals: 1) time sharing 2) a community using it and 3) education, which meant supporting research projects. The following Tuesday he met with Jay [Julius A] Stratton, then President of MIT and Fano was surprised that the question posed was what building he would use for the project, thus encouraging him to go ahead with it. In reviewing the period, Corbato described how Licklider went to ARPA with "a mission," that of developing time sharing and interactive computing. Lick added that while his superiors called for Command and Control, he made clear he was going to be involved with "interactive computing."(37) "I just wanted to make it clear," Lick noted, "that I wasn't going to be running battle planning missions or something. I was going to be dealing with the engineering substratum that [would] make it possible to do that stuff [command and control]." When asked how he felt when he learned that there would be funding to develop CTSS as part of the Project MAC program that Licklider was funding at MIT, Corbato recalled, "Well, it was a cooperative thing. Nobody had license to run wild -- but you had license to try to make something happen."(38) "My goal," he clarified, "was to exhibit it. I wasn't trying to start a company or anything like that; my goal was to exhibit it." Fano developed a proposal for Project MAC. It was submitted. The contract was signed on July 1, 1963, the day the 1963 summer study began at MIT to demonstrate and create enthusiasm for time- sharing and interactive computing. "Time sharing," Martin Greenberger recalled, "on the Computation Center machine was available on the opening day of the summer study project."(39) By mid October a second time sharing computer was available for Project MAC. And it was operating within a week. Reviewing the reasons for the success of Project MAC, Greenberger explained, "CTSS was an open system. It challenged the user to design his own subsystem, no matter what discipline he came from, no matter what his research interests."(40) Fano acknowledged one of their failures. "One of our goals," he explained, "was to make the computer truly accessible to people wherever they were. We did not succeed. For people who lived in the community that used the system, it was fine. In any system like that, you keep learning things, you keep using new things, and so you keep having troubles. If you can go next door and say, `Hey, I was doing this and something strange happened, do you know what I did wrong?' usually somebody in your neighborhood will be able to help you. If instead you are far away, you are stuck....We tried to develop some way of helping remote users.... Well, we never did. So in fact, we failed to make the computer truly accessible regardless of the location of the user."(41) Despite the problems, Greenberger observed, "I think one of the greatest successes was that CTSS gave so many people, with such widely different backgrounds, a system and experience that they would not have gotten any other way at that point." Recalling how Project MAC created an on-line community, Fano remembered, "friendships being born out of using somebody else's program, people communicating through the system and then meeting by accident and say `Oh, that's you.' All sorts of things. It was a nonreproducible community phenomenon," he concluded. (42) Offering his summary of the achievements, Corbato explained: "Two aspects strike me as being important. One is the kind of open system quality, which allowed everyone to make the system kind of their thing rather than what somebody else imposed on them....So people were tailoring it to mesh with their interests. And the other thing is, I think, we deliberately kept the system model relatively unsophisticated (maybe that's the wrong word - uncomplicated), so we could explain it easily."(43) Licklider's observations, described in a paper he published in 1968 with Robert Taylor, show how the achievements of Project MAC and the other time-sharing systems built as a result of Lick's tenure at ARPA, led to the vision that helped to guide the development of the ARPANET. In the paper, "The Computer as a Communication Device," Licklider and Taylor predicted, "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face."(44) "To communicate is more than to send and receive," they wrote, "We believe that communicators have to do something nontrivial with the information they send and receive....We believe that we are entering into a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information -- not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it." While they acknowledged that the switching function was important in the transfer of information, that was not the aspect they were interested in. Instead they proposed that there was a power and responsiveness that online interaction with a computer made possible that would significantly affect the communication possible between humans using the computer. Though they were familiar with commercial facilities that called themselves "multiaccess," they explained that these had not succeeded in creating the kind of multiaccess computer communities that the noncommercial timesharing systems spawned. They described these time-sharing communities, of which Project MAC was one of the early examples: "These communities are socio-technical pioneers, in several ways, out ahead of the rest of the computer world: What makes them so? First some of their members are computer scientists and engineers who understand the concept of man- computer interaction and the technology of interactive multiaccess systems. Second, others of their members are creative people in other fields and disciplines who recognize the usefulness and who sense the impact of interactive multiaccess computers on their work. Third, the communities have large multiaccess computers and have learned to use them. And fourth, their efforts are regenerative." Elaborating on what they meant by regenerative, they wrote, "In the half-dozen communities, the computer systems research and development and the development of substantative applications mutually support each other. They are producing large and growing resources of programs, data, and know-how, but we have seen only the beginning. There is much more programming and data collection -- and much more learning how to cooperate -- to be done before the full potential of the concept can be realized." They go on to caution that, "Obviously multiactive systems must be developed interactively." And they explain that "The systems being built must remain flexible and open-ended throughout the process of development, which is evolutionary." They also describe how there were systems that were advertising themselves via the same labels as "interactive," "time-sharing" and "multiaccess." But these were commercial systems and they describe the distinct difference between the commercial systems and the noncommercial ones. The noncommercial "differ by having a greater degree of open-endedness, by rendering more service, and above all by providing facilities that foster a working sense of community among their users." "The commercially available time-sharing services," they observed, "do not yet offer the power and flexibility of software resources -- the `general purposeness' -- of the interactive multiaccess systems of Systems Development Corporation in Santa Monica, the University of California at Berkeley, a the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. -- which have been collectively serving over a thousand people for several years."(pg 31) They discussed their vision of the future. They predicted that linking up the existing communities would create a still more powerful and important development -- supercommunities made up of the existing communities created by the time-sharing systems. "The hope," they explained, "is that interconnection will make available to all the communities the programs and data resources of the entire supercommunity." "This collection of people, hardware and software," they wrote, "the multiaccess computer together with its local community of users -- will become a node in a geographically distributed computer network...Through the network of message processors, therefore, all the large computers can communicate with one another. And through them, all the members of the supercommunity can communicate with other people, with programs, with data, or with selected combinations of these resources." They predicted that the future would bring "a mobile network of networks -- ever changing in both content and configuration." And just as Licklider realized that a time-sharing system was more than a collection of computers and software, Fano recognized that "a time sharing system was more than just a set of people using common resources; it was also a means of communicating and sharing ideas."(45) Another time-sharing pioneer, Doug Ross, observed that Project MAC made CTSS available rather than waiting for the ideal technical system system to be developed, as others had favored. By producing a prototype and encouraging others to contribute to it, CTSS had a significant impact on others who, therefore, had the ability to build into the system what they needed and to contribute so it would serve their needs. "I always say," Ross concluded, "you can't design an interface from just one side."(46) This quality of putting an open system out and encouraging people to contribute to it to make it what they needed, was building a human centered rather than technology centered system.(47) Summing up the achievement of the Project MAC pioneers, John A. N. Lee, editor of the two special issues of "The IEEE Annals of the History of Computing" about the development of time-sharing and Project MAC at MIT, writes: "With the development of computer networking, which almost naturally followed on the development of time-sharing and interactive computing, it is as if the whole world now time shares myriad computers, providing facilities which were beyond the dreams of even the MIT researchers of 1960...But this is where it started -- with the ideas of John McCarthy, the implementation skills of Fernando Corbato, the vision of J.C.R. Licklider, and the organizational skills of Robert Fano."(48) Part IV - The Implications What is the significance of these early days of cybernetics and the development of time-sharing and interactive computing toward the current developments in networking in the U.S. and towards U.S. policy to direct those developments? The pioneers of cybernetics and multiaccess computing who gathered at the MIT centennial in the Spring of 1961 to discuss the future of computing, proposed that the crucial issue one must determine in trying to solve a problem is how to formulate the question. They expressed concern that the computer would bring great changes into our world and that people who understood the issues involved be part of setting government policy regarding these developments. The pioneers also observed that there were opposing directions in contention with regard to what the future should be. One road was that of human-computer symbiosis, of a close interaction between the human and the computer so each could function more effectively. "The hope is that, in not too many years," J.C.R. Licklider wrote, "human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today."(49) The other road was that of creating computers that would be able to do the thinking or problem solving without human assistance. Though pioneers like Licklider explained that "man-computer symbiosis is probably not the ultimate paradigm for complex technological syste" and that in the future at some point "electronic or chemical `machines' will outdo the human brain in most of the functions we now consider exclusively within its province...There will nevertheless be a fairly long interim during which the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working together in intimate association."(50) Though Licklidewas willing to concede, "dominance in the distant future of celebration to machines alone," he recognized the creative and important developments that such a partnership between the human and computer would make possible. The years of human-computer symbiosis, Licklider predicted "should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind."(51) In the years following the development of CTSS and Project MAC and the linking of different time-sharing systems to create a super-community of on-line communities which became known as the ARPANET, the firm foundation set by CTSS and Project MAC and the helpful vision and direction set by Licklider and Fano and other pioneers of the period, gave birth to the sprawling and impressive networking communities that today we call the Internet. The vision of human-computer symbiosis as an intellectual advance for humans was presented. And online human-computer, and computer facilitated human to human communication was seen as the embodiment of this symbiosi The vision of the computer pioneers of the 1960's of human-computer symbiosis, and of creating a multiaccess, interactive, network of networks, or a super community network as they termed it, is the vision that can still fruitfully guide our work in building and extending the global computer network in the U.S. and around the world today. Footnotes (1) IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol 14, no 2, 1992 p 15. (2) Ibid. (3) Martin Greenberger, ed, "Management and Computers of Future", Cambridge, 1962, p. 8. (4) John R. Pierce, "Communication," "Scientific American", Sept. 1972, vol 227, no 3. (5) Ibid., p. 33. (6) He gives the example of a large community "where the Lords of Things as They Are protect themselves from hunger by wealth, from public opinion by privacy and anonymity, from private criticism by the laws of libel and the possession of the means of communication." It is in such a society, he explains, that "ruthlessness can reach its most sublime levels." And he points out that the creation of such an unstable society requires "the control of the means of communication" as "the most effective and important" element."(from Pierce, p. 41) (7) Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine", Cambridge, MA, pg. 11-12. (8) from "Challenge Interview: Norbert Wiener: Man and the Machine", June 1959, in "Collected Works of Norbert Wiener with Commentaries", vol 4, 1985, p. 717. (9) "God and Golem," p. 71. (10) "A Scientist's Dilemma in a Materialist World," by Norbert Wiener, p. 707, in "Collected Works," p. 709. (11) Norbert Wiener, "I Am A Mathematician," Cambridge, 1956, p. 171. (12) Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics," Cambridge, 1948, p. 1. (13) from "The Legacy of Norbert Wiener: A Centennial Symposium," 1994, p. 19. (14) Chronology from IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 14, No 1, 1994, p. 18 (15) See "Annals", vol 14, no. 1, 1992, p. 38 for a description of the frustrations of batch processing. (16) See Annals, vol 14, no. 1, 1992, " John McCarthy's 1959 memorandum, p. 20-21. See also J.A.N. Lee "Claims to the Term Time-Sharing", p. 16-17. (17) John Mc Carthy's 1959 memorandum, p. 20. (18) Annals, vol. 14, no. 2, 1992, p. 16. (19) Ibid. (20) Ibid. (21) Interview with J.C.R. Licklider conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute. (22) J.C.R. Licklider, "Man Computer Symbiosis," IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HGR-2, pagesT 4-11, March 1960, in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider 1915-1990", Palo Alto, August 7, 1990. (23) Interview with Fano by the Charles Babbage Institute. (24) The book was first published under the title "Management anb the Future of the Computer" by MIT press in 1962 and later in in hardback and paperback under the title "Computers and the World of the Future". It was edited by Martin Greenberger. (25) "Management and the Future of the Computer", ed by Martin Greenberger, Cambridge, 1962, p. 24. (26) Ibid., p. 32. (27) Ibid., p. 204-5. (28) Ibid. p. 205. (29) Ibid., p. 206. (30) Ibid., p. 207. (31) Ibid., p. 324. (32) Annals, vol 14, no 2, 1992, p. 20. (33) Annals vol 14 no 1, p. 44. Teager's recommendations are described in "IEEE Annals of the History of Computing," vol 14, No. 1, 1992, p. 24-27. Excerpts from the Long Range Computation Study Group's recommendation for a time-sharing systems which resulted in Corbato's work on CTSS are in the same issue on page 28-30. (34) Ibid., p. 45. (35) Ibid., p.45-46. Corbato describes how he thought CTSS would be running on the IBM 7090 by the time he was to give a talk on it at the AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference in May, 1962. But that they were not able to get it running by the time the paper was presented. Despite his disappointment, the paper is an important historical document. See "An Experimental Time-Sharing System," by Fernando J. Corbato, Jarjorie Merwin-Daggett, Robert C. Daley, "Proceedings of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies," Spring Joint Computer Conference, May 1-3, 1962, vol 21, pg. 335-344. (36) Annals, no 2, p. 21-22 (37) Ibid., p. 24 (38) Ibid. (39) Ibid., p. 26. (40) Ibid. (41) Ibid., p. 31. (42) Ibid. (43) Ibid. Annals, no. 2, p. 33. (44) "The Computer as a Communication Device," IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960, and reprinted in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: 1915- 1990", Palo Alto, August 7, 1990, p. 21. (45) Annals, Vol 14, no 1, p. 48. (46) Ibid., p. 51. (47) Ibid., one of the interviewers, Robert Rosin noted, "You see, if what you're trying to do is optimize technical resources (physical resources), Herb's point of view was exactly right. If you try to optimize the use of human resources, then the point of view you were taking was a lot closer to reality." (48) Ibid, p. 3-4. (49) "Man Computer Symbiosis," p. 3. Licklider proposes the role that each partner will play in the symbiotic relationship. The human partner will "set the golas, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations." The computers "will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking." ("Man-Computer Symbiosis", p. 1) (50) Ibid., p. 2-3. (51) Ibid.