Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network " the Kurzweil Library

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Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network

December 11, 2001 by J.C.R. Licklider

This memo sent from J.C.R. Licklider to his colleagues in 1963 explores the early challenges presented in trying to establish a time-sharing network of computers with the software of the era–ultimately, this vision would lead to ARPANet, the precursor of the Internet in use today. Will the future iterations lead to an Intergalactic Computer Network?

Originally distributed as a memorandum April 23, 1963. Published on KurzweilAI.net December 11, 2001.

ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY

Washington 25, D.C. April 23, 1963

MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network

FROM: J. C. R. Licklider

SUBJECT: Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming Meeting

First, I apologize humbly for having to postpone the meeting scheduled for 3 May 1963 in Palo Alto. The ARPA Command & Control Research office has just been assigned a new task that must be activated immediately, and I must devote the whole of the coming week to it. The priority is externally enforced. I am extremely sorry to inconvenience those of you who have made plans for May 3rd. Inasmuch as I shall be in Cambridge the rest of this week, I am asking my colleagues here to re-schedule the meeting, with May 10th, Palo Alto, as target time and place.

The need for the meeting and the purpose of the meeting are things that I feel intuitively, not things that I perceive in clear structure. I am afraid that that fact will be too evident in the following paragraphs. Nevertheless, I shall try to set forth some background material and some thoughts about possible interactions among the various activities in the overall enterprise for which, as you may have detected in the above subject, I am at a loss for a name.

In the first place, it is evident that we have among us a collection of individual (personal and/or organizational) aspirations, efforts, activities, and projects. These have in common, I think, the characteristics that they are in some way connected with advancement of the art or technology of information processing, the advancement of intellectual capability (man, man-machine, or machine), and the approach to a theory of science. The individual parts are, at least to some extent, mutually interdependent. To make progress, each of the active research needs a software base and a hardware facility more complex and more extensive than he, himself, can create in reasonable time.

In pursuing the individual objectives, various members of the group will be preparing executive the monitoring routines, languages amd [sic.] compilers, debugging systems and documentation schemes, and substantive computer programs of more or less general usefulness. One of the purposes of the meeting–perhaps the main purpose–is to explore the possibilities for mutual advantage in these activities–to determine who is dependent upon whom for what and who may achieve a bonus benefit from which activities of what other members of the group. It will be necessary to take into account the costs as well as the values, of course. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is much more likely to be advantageous than disadvantageous for each to see the others’ tentative plans before the plans are entirely crystalized. I do not mean to argue that everyone should abide by some rigid system of rules and constraints that might maximize, for example, program interchangeability.

But, I do think that we should see the main parts of the several projected efforts, all on one blackboard, so that it will be more evident than it would otherwise be, where network-wide conventions would be helpful and where individual concessions to group advantage would be most important.

It is difficult to determine, of course, what constitutes "group advantage." Even at the risk of confusing my own individual objectives (or ARPA’s) with those of the "group," however, let me try to set forth some of the things that might be, in some sense, group or system or network desiderata.

There will be programming languages, debugging languages, time-sharing system control languages, computer-network languages, data-base (or file-storage-and-retrieval languages), and perhaps other languages as well. It may or may not be a good idea to oppose or to constrain lightly the proliferation of such. However, there seems to me to be little question that it is desireable to foster "transfer of training" among these languages. One way in which transfer can be facilitated is to follow group consensus in the making of the arbitrary and nearly-arbitrary decisions that arise in the design and...