Talk:J. C. R. Licklider

Search
The page on "Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider" cannot be found when you search "Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider" for reasons I do not fully understand and so cannot correct - I think it may be that the title of the page does not use his full name. It finds the page correctly only with "J. C. R. Licklider" and you can get a listing with the page as the top hit using only the surname "Licklider". If someone who knows more about editing a Wikipedia page than I could make an intelligent change so that the Wiki search function picks up this obvious search that would be a great service - or if someone could tell me how to accomplish that goal I will make he change needed. I am a total novice at Wikipedia, not an expert at this topic and probably should not be let loose editing pages... Ionlycametosay (talk) 22:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I made a new redirect from the full name. Dicklyon (talk) 00:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Project MAC
The section on Project MAC refers to "his two-year term of office in 1962". Term of office where? ARPA? I can't find any place earlier in the article that says he was at some place for two years, and even if I've overlooked it, it would be good to clarify it in this section.Mcswell (talk) 16:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The context was screwed up in this edit by User:Mdd. Maybe you can work on straigtening it out. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I will take a look here, and will try to fix this. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 18:18, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed it. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 18:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. Dicklyon suggested I screwed up the context, what doesn't sound very nice. I call it wikification. I rearranged the whole article in an other format, as I have done this with over 1.000 other biographical articles. I haven't had much complains yet, but I did have my share of disagrement with mister Dicklyon. Now this format I use makes it easier to further extent the article in two directions: biographical and work (science & technology) related. I for example noticed the information about his publications and awards seemed to fail. I added some info there.


 * Agreed, I could use nicer phrasing sometimes. Thanks for the fix. Dicklyon (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Infocom?
I was disappointed to see that this article makes no mention of Licklider's role in Infocom. Not serious enough to put here? Mopalia (talk) 17:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Not much there, as far as I can see, but a brief mention should be OK. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

long quote
i removed the very long quote from the beginning because it is a. way too long and b. not given any context. when i was reading this article for the first time i did not know where this quote came from or why i should care about it, so the article's readability was hindered. if anyone feels like this quote deserves to stay in the article, consider putting it in a separate section (e.g. "quotes about. . .") and consider giving the quote an attribution within the article proper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.245.107.17 (talk) 13:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I added that (admittedly long) quotation because I found it a good indicator of the sheer magnitude of Lick's influence on the world. For someone who's less than, say, roughly thirty, how different today's computerized world is from the world of 1960 is probably hard to grasp. But the intellectual root of all of those changes is with Lick and the people he encouraged.
 * I could just say that, but the standard for Wikipedia now is that one can't originate anything, one has to have a verifiable source for and statement or assertion. So I used that. I'll put it back, with a bit of context.
 * PS: As to did not know where this quote came from, it was properly sourced, so you must not be very familiar with Wikipedia article conventions. Noel (talk) 16:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on J. C. R. Licklider. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120916152457/http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/e553/Readings/Licklider%20Libraries%20of%20the%20future%201965.pdf to http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/e553/Readings/Licklider%20Libraries%20of%20the%20future%201965.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120916152457/http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/e553/Readings/Licklider%20Libraries%20of%20the%20future%201965.pdf to http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/e553/Readings/Licklider%20Libraries%20of%20the%20future%201965.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070928040233/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=39&EventId=486 to http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=39&EventId=486

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:15, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Man-Computer Symbiosis
The wiki here says that "unlike many AI practitioners, Licklider never felt that men would be replaced by computer-based beings." In fact, on the second page of "Man-Computer Symbiosis" he writes "In short, it seems worthwhile to avoid argument with (other) enthusiasts for artificial intelligence by conceding dominance in the distant future of cerebration to machines alone." So this does not seem to be altogether valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Currandwyer (talk • contribs) 23:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I changed a link
...and I felt I should document why. The link was in what is currently footnote 32, to the article ''Cogley, Michael (21 August 2020). "AI defeats human F-16 pilot in virtual dogfight". Telegraph Media Group Limited.'' at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/08/21/ai-defeats-human-f-16-pilot-virtual-dogfight/. This is behind a paywall. The link I provided instead (https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-632995578/the-defense-advanced-research-projects-agency-s-artificial) is not behind a paywall, and its title "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Artificial Intelligence Vision" also seems more relevant in general to the relationship between Licklider and today's DARPA than an article about a virtual dogfight. That said, this is an article "preview", not the complete article (which is behind a paywall); and this is also the first time I've edited such a link, so I may have left something out. Mcswell (talk) 16:55, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Long quote from his bio
The long quotation from Lick's bio was removed with the comment "massive worshipful hagiography unneeded in top paragraph, which should calmly and succinctly summarize article topic", and they might have a point about the top section (it wasn't the top paragraph), but: Like I said, I can see an argument that it doesn't belong in the intro - but that is who he really was, and I think it's important for his article here to say so. 98.166.125.164 (talk) 05:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's about Lick's whole career, not any period in particular, so I don't see an obvious lower section to put it in; if some wants to create a new "Retrospective" summary at the bottom, and put it there, or something like that, that would be fine. But it should be somewhere; he really was that important.
 * This isn't written by some deranged fan, it's from Lick's standard bio, which is highly thought of.
 * It might sound like a "massive[ly] worshipful hagiography" to someone who's not familiar with the evolution of computer science in the 1960's, but ... read what Robert W. Taylor (who succeeded Lick at IPTO, and did the ARPANET) had to say about Lick here, and you will see that he shared Waldrop's assessment of his importance: "Lick believed we could do better and, more than any other single individual, saw to it that we did." (emphasis added).
 * In addition to Taylor, everyone in the MIT LCS/AI building who had ever worked with Lick had the highest respect for him; Corby, Jerry Saltzer, etc (at least one a Turing Award winner).
 * If you look at Katie Hafner's "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", it is dedicated to Lick. One more person who wasn't a clueless fan who understood how important he really was.