The National Postal Museum and the Mercurians

Symposium on the History of Communications Technologies

October 17, 2007

The Computer as a Communications Device

Jay Hauben hauben@columbia.edu

JCR Licklider 1915-1990 J.C.R. Licklider. "Man-Computer Symbiosis." In IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pp. 4-11, March 1960. http://memex.org/licklider.pdf J.C.R. Licklider and Robert S. Taylor. The Computer as a Communications Device. In Science and Technology no.76, Apr. 1968, pp. 21 31. http://memex.org/licklider.pdf

Nobert Wiener 1896-1964

1948
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Wiener and Bigelows Hopf-Wiener Intergral Equation as a solution of the anti-aircraft fire control problem

gh(t)= f(t- )dWh() t

0

(Masini, P. R.: Norbert Wiener 1894-1964, Birkhuser Verlag, Basel, 1990, p 185)

f(t-) is the input data from the tracking mechanism Wh() is the weighting function that took into account the averaging over the possible paths and included the filtering of the tracking errors gh(t) is the predicted future position of the plane an interval h later.

Anti-aircraft fire control with human spotters

An example of the computer Weiner was considering

^ I I I I I I I I I I
Computer like Wiener was considering

My whole point of view in these matters made me regard the computer as another form of communications apparatus, concerned more with messages than with power.
Norbert Wiener I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy 1956, p265

Its [the computing machines] nature was that of a series of switching devices, so enchained together that the information coming out of a number of stages of these was introduced into a subsequent stage as ingoing and regulating information.
Norbert Wiener I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy 1956, p265

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11 1948 1950

Communication is the cement of society. Society does not consist merely in a multiplicity of individuals meeting only in personal strife and for the sake of procreation, but in an intimate interplay of these individuals in a larger organism.
Norbert Wiener I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy 1956, p 326

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Through the network . . . , all the large computers can communicate with one another. And through them, all the members of the super community can communicate -- with other people, with programs, with data, or with a selected combinations of those resources.
J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, The Computer as a Communication Device, 1968

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What will on-line interactive communities be like? In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest.
J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, The Computer as a Communication Device, 1968
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For the society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will to be on line be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of "intelligence amplification," the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.
J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, The Computer as a Communication Device, 1968
15

16 South Korean PC Bang Cyber Cafe

The National Postal Museum and the Mercurians

Symposium on the History of Communications Technologies

October 17, 2007

The Computer as a Communications Device

Jay Hauben hauben@columbia.edu

17