ACM: Ubiquity - Kleinrock on Nomadic Computing

ACM: Ubiquity - Kleinrock on Nomadic Computing: "KLEINROCK: Yes, J.C.R. Licklider. He was a most dynamic fellow. His MIT influence and connection is important. He had access to many people. He was a visionary as a psychologist and as someone interested in human-computer interaction. He was brilliant. He was one of the real heroes at the time, and he was the first director of the IPTO office within ARPA. The people who followed him as heads of IPTO were also magnificent. Ivan Sutherland came after him. Ivan was a classmate of mine at MIT, by the way. And after him came Bob Taylor, followed by Larry Roberts. Larry was also a classmate of mine. In fact, Ivan, Larry and I took our thesis defense at the same time because our doctoral committees had overlapping people. Claude Shannon was on each of our committees, for example. We had to demonstrate some of our work on a Lincoln Laboratory computer. All these distinguished faculty and the three of us students went out to Lincoln Lab and we showed them our wares. It was a wonderful and very exciting time. ARPA was a terrific engine of innovation, led by people who were themselves excellent researchers with ideas, with vision and with also the wisdom not to provide overbearing management and guidance, but rather to let the scientists they were supporting run with their own ideas without a lot of site visits, without a lot of oversight management, without a lot of reports. 'Here's a goal. Here's some money. Here's a vision. Let's make it happen.'"

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