Rick's Appleseed: Seeds of the Network Society

The symbiosis between humans and computers!
Literally translated, it is "Man-Computer Symbiosis".

…Did you think so?

Indeed, this is a theme "for today."
However, there was someone who talked about this theme as early as
"1960". That was over 60 years ago from 2024.

No, they were a scientist.
The man's name was Licklider.
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider.
In this article, let's call him


"Rick" with affection. This article is a story about his life, baked like an apple pie.
Rick was born in


1915. In Japan, that would be the 4th year of the Taisho era. It was around the time Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote "Rashomon."
He was born in St. Louis, USA.
His father was a pastor, and he was an only child.


Engineering
was a child who loved, and he played with model airplanes and tinkering with cars. He went on to Washington University in St. Louis. In 1942, he received his doctorate in

"psychoacoustics"

from the University of Rochester.

It is a field of study also called auditory psychology, which researches the effects of sound on the psyche.
Things like playing Mozart for prenatal education, the effects of noise on the psyche, or acoustic weapons as interpersonal weapons….
In the summer of 1942, in the midst of World War II, he began working at the Psychoacoustic Laboratory at Harvard University.
Here, he conducted research to soothe and help the psychology of pilots.
Because fighter pilots move at incredible speeds, they were


constantly plagued by "noise."

In the deafening roar, they had to


"communicate"

…. They were exhausted. So, Rick conducted research on the process by which people understand "spoken language."
In doing so, he discovered that emphasizing "consonants" made it easier to understand even in noise.
Converters were developed, and information transmission to pilots was improved.
Communication became easier.

The pilots were moved to tears…!
In 1950, he became an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He created psychology programs for engineering students.

That is exactly right!
Engineering enthusiasts tend to become people-haters.
Psychology enthusiasts tend to become tech-illiterate.
However, Rick was different.
He was an expert, a specialist in "both."

…It might be called an "inevitability of history" that he wrote a paper in 1960 titled
"Man-Computer Symbiosis."

Symbiosis between man and computer!

…Prior to this, in 1951, he was developing

the "light pen."
This was a development to assist operators who controlled radar.Radar displays information detected by radio waves on a screen.Operators needed to recognize those positions and input them into the computer.
Tasks between machine and human…
Rick developed the light pen to


make it easy to input data by "just pressing a button."

The operators were moved to tears…!

They were in a state of "Thank you, Rick."

With a history like that, thinking about the "bridge" between machines and humans was truly his specialty, his true calling.
At the time, the hottest machine was
the "computer."
However, computers at that time felt like


"just amazing calculators."

Rick thought to himself.

…I work at a research institute.
There are many people here doing intellectual labor.So, how do they spend their"time"?

I thought about my own actions and thoughts.As a result,I realized that 85% of my thinking time was taken up by "preparation for thinking."



In other words, finding necessary information, searching for where it was—that "preliminary stage" took time.

◆ Humans clearly organize problems◆ Assemble programs◆ It takes two days to get to this point◆ The next day, the computer processes it in "a few minutes"◆ Receive the results on a 6-meter long piece of paper…

If humans could find information in a flash, they could spend their time on "thinking"!
And aren't computers better at searching for large amounts of information?
…

Shouldn't we "symbiose"?Thinking this, Rick began to explore the concept of"time-sharing."


At that time, computers were expensive and not something you could just use easily.However, what if many users could"share the computer" by the hour


?
Couldn't we shorten the 85% spent on "preparation for thinking, such as gathering information"?
…If we were constantly connected via a network to an advanced interactive computer,
couldn't we utilize the strengths of both humans and computers?…If we enhanced information retrieval functions to create a thinking center like a library,
and connected them mutually via communication lines

…?

Users would use the center via a paid line service.
Instead of one person hoarding huge memory and complex programs,
everyone shares the cost in real-time together…
!

That's right. This is the idea of the current

"Internet (work)."Rick had already published such things in his paper as early as 1960.…The US at the time was on bad terms with the Soviet Union.

The "Cuban Missile Crisis" also occurred in 1962.
We must somehow

strengthen the information network
!
"ARPANET"

network was established.
Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork.It is the "Advanced Research Projects Agency Network."In October 1962, he became the director of this department.In 1963, he sent a memo to each member titled

"Intergalactic Computer Network."


Under his guidance, many projects began to move!
After seeing that through, in June 1964, he suddenly resigned.His tenure wasonly about a year and a half…

However, during this period, the gate to the later "net society" and "information society" was definitely opened.Finally, to summarize.In this article, I summarized the achievements of Licklider, also known as "Rick."He is also called

"the Johnny Appleseed of computing."

It means


"the person who sows apple seeds."
In 1990, the year the Internet finally began to spread throughout the world, he passed away.He sowed seeds ahead of his time.
…I am now making delicious use of those fruits, and in this way,

making a "post."

*For Granovetter's article on networks between people, interactions, and ties, click here↓
"The Strength of Weak Ties"

Please check it out as well!