1962

In August 1962 Joseph Carl Robnett (J.C.R.) Licklider writes in a series of memos about a global computer network, a “galactic network”, already outlining all the basic ideas, which characterize the internet of today. In his memos Licklider talks about a network to which everybody on the globe is connected, and everybody, no matter from where, has access to programs and information. He also talks about a separate nationwide research network. With his memos Licklider set the foundation stone for the development of a global network like the internet. Two years earlier, in 1960, Licklider publishes his visionary article “Man-Computer-Symbiosis”,

describing the concept of simple interaction between man and machine. He claims that man and machine would achieve more together, than both of them would do separately. If problems are solved that way, according to Licklider, people could save the most valuable post-modern resource: time. With his theories and memos Licklider developed a new definition of a computer as a communication device instead of a computer as a plain calculating machine.