We were given an activity to make a paper about a certain person who made a great impact on the internet. We could choose whoever we wanted from the given list. The list had limited people and by the time I saw it, a lot of the names were already taken. I panicked and chose this guy, JCR Licklider or Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider. I didn’t really know who he was. No background on him, no idea who he was, and to be honest, I only chose him because he had a cool name. After picking him, I thought that I would have a hard time making the paper considering that I didn’t really know him and I might not interested in what he did. I looked him up, read a few articles on him and was astonished. I found out that he was one of the Internet pioneers that helped shape the internet to what it is now. When I read that, I instantly looked for more info on him. Read to different articles and what not. I kept on reading and reading until I learned everything I needed to get this paper started.

Again, as I stated once before, I didn’t know if I was going to have a hard time making this paper after I panic picked JCR Licklider. Finding out more about him. I became more and more interested in what he did. I feel what he did is very important, to me at least. In real life, I am an introvert. A very shy person who can’t make friends as easily as an extrovert. I grew up playing games alone inside my room as a kid so I really didn’t have the time to practice socializing with my peers. Then when I was in high school, I really didn’t have the courage to socialize with anyone as I felt that everyone was “too far away” from me or I couldn’t “connect” to them. Around 2nd year High school I found out about the wonder that is the internet. I was a kid back then, had all the time in the world to explore the internet. Online Games are what attracted me the most at that time. First person shooters, Role playing games, Strategy Games, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, and your casual Farmville. Games that let you not just to interact with the software but with other people as well. These games helped me a lot. Learning proper English, History, Hand-Eye coordination, Money managing and leading me to the job I want in the future, Game development. This also helped me get to know more of my classmates as they played similar games as I did.

It brought us together. I brought everyone together. I never felt I was alone while I was online on a game. I never knew who to thank for this. Repeatedly thanking the internet itself for the magnificent joys it brought upon me and my friends, but now I know better. JCR Licklider was the one who thought of the idea for interactive computing, which is what most games are doing. A computer-user interaction to complete the desired task. I know there are many other examples of which I could have picked but this is what I wanted to right the most and I felt that it was appropriate to the topic at hand.

In St. Louis Missouri, March 11th 1915, Joseph Carl Robnett was born into the Licklider family as an only child. His father Joseph Parron Licklider and his mother Margaret Robnett raised him as a young child to early adolescence. He became a psychologist on 1942 but was later interested in Information technology and pursued it which led him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950. Here, He got to work on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Project or SAGE for short. He was assigned as the Human Factors expert. From there he would go and create the idea of Interactive computing. Realizing what computer networks were capable of, JCR predicted the potential of multiple computers coming together and making one better system. More strong and better than what a single team could do. In a sense, team work. This would go on as he searches for more potential of the idea he has. He was given tons of awards and switched jobs from company to company. Slowly modelling what the internet is now.

For most part, how is this connected to the “gaming” example I spoke about early on? Well, this has a lot to do with it. From the regular interactive soft in which we use every day like MS Word or Google Chrome. Games are, in a sense, a leveled up interactive system. Interacting with a computer that covers your every move. This just not promotes the user to be precise with the movements it commands but also promotes the software to be at par with what the player/user is capable of. As the years go on, the games get better and better and so does the interaction within them. Games promote more interaction. From point and click to pressing 6-8 buttons at the right time to do the desired task. Aside from games, the interactive computing, JCR Licklider created is so important in this day and age. I couldn’t even write my paper if it wasn’t for his idea. Imagine the internet now without any interactions whatsoever. Just looking at the information which is given to you. It would be so boring. Maybe 50% of the internet wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for him. To the regular user of the internet, he isn’t known that well. A ghost the molded the thing we use on a daily basis to how we like it. I think this guy needs more recognition than what he has right now. To me, JCR Licklider will be ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE to have helped shape what the internet is. And thus ends my paper. I hope you liked it.

The sources of the information I have gathered for this paper are as follows:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_licklider.html
http://internethalloffame.org/inductees/jcr-licklider

I did not plague any paper and I think this paper proves well of that as what is written here is mostly personal to me. I used these sites as a source of information on JCR Licklider as I have no background on him or did I know him before the activity.