"Imagining the Future".(Brief Article)

(Editor's note. This originally ran in "Today's News & Views," which is found at www.nrlc.org. So many people responded positively that I've decided to make it available to readers of National Right to Life News. I hope you find it of interest.)

As I often do on my ride into work, I flipped my radio dial over to National Public Radio. I was rewarded with a fascinating interview with M. Mitchell Waldrop, author of a new biography of a man 99.999% of us have never heard of: J.C.R. Licklider.

Licklider, who died in 1990, was a "seminal influence" in helping create the world of personal computers in which nearly all of us now actively participate. A visionary who "imagined the future" (in Waldrop's elegant phrase), Licklider's contributions apparently are endless. Although for all practical purposes unknown to the wider world, Licklider laid the foundation for virtually all of modern computing - - "times-sharing, point-and-click interfaces, graphics and the Internet."

Among his greatest strengths was that when presented with a "never-to-be-repeated opportunity," Licklider had the guts to press ahead where others might falter. Yet he was genuinely humble, always pooh-poohing his own contributions.

Part of the reason his enormously inventive work has gone unrecognized, Waldrop writes, is because "he refused to toot his own horn. He seems to have been one of those rare beings who genuinely didn't care who got the credit."

As I looked Waldrop up on the web, I learned that he is a physicist turned journalist. I checked out a few of his many other fine pieces. The title of one preliminary essay on Licklider caught my eye because it made me think of our Movement: "Computing's Johnny Appleseed."

But while there was only one ...