# J.C.R. Licklider

Psychologist and computer scientist who envisioned human-computer symbiosis and the networked 'Intergalactic Computer Network.'

**J.C.R. Licklider** (1915–1990) was a psychologist and computer scientist whose ideas seeded interactive and networked computing. As head of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office, he funded much of the research that led to ARPANET.

## Key works in the library

- [Man-Computer Symbiosis](/docs/man-computer-symbiosis.md) (1960) — humans and computers as coupled partners.
- [On-Line Man-Computer Communication](/docs/on-line-man-computer-communication.md) (1962) — real-time interactive computing.
- [the Intergalactic Computer Network memo](/docs/licklider-memo.md) (1963) — the "Intergalactic Computer Network."
- [The Computer as a Communication Device](/docs/computer-as-communication-device.md) (1968) — the computer as a communication medium.

## Significance

Licklider is the headwater of the Independent Internet lineage. His insistence on partnership and networked autonomy runs forward through [Engelbart](/wiki/engelbart.md) and into the principle of [decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md).

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## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [As We May Think](/docs/as-we-may-think.md) — Vannevar Bush's wartime essay imagining the Memex — a personal device for storing and associatively linking all of one's books, records, and communications.
- [The Computer as a Communication Device](/docs/computer-as-communication-device.md) — Licklider and Taylor argue that networked computers will become a medium for human communication and community, not just computation.
- [On-Line Man-Computer Communication](/docs/on-line-man-computer-communication.md) — Licklider and Clark sketch real-time, interactive use of computers and gesture toward an 'Intergalactic Computer Network' of connected machines.
- [Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework](/wiki/augmenting-human-intellect.md) — Engelbart's SRI report laying out a systematic program for using computers to raise human problem-solving capability.
- [Decentralization Across the Lineage](/wiki/decentralization-across-the-lineage.md) — How one move — removing the central intermediary — recurs from Licklider's network through the Web and Bitcoin to the Independent Internet.
- [Decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md) — Designing systems with no central owner or single point of control — the structural core of the Independent Internet.
- [Douglas Engelbart](/wiki/engelbart.md) — Inventor and researcher who turned the idea of augmenting human intellect into a working research program and the demos that defined modern computing.
- [Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network](/wiki/licklider-memo.md) — Licklider's memo naming a shared, interconnected community of computers — a rhetorical precursor to the internet.
- [Man-Computer Symbiosis](/wiki/man-computer-symbiosis.md) — Licklider's foundational vision of humans and computers as coupled partners, not master and tool — the conceptual seed of interactive computing.
- [Robert Taylor](/wiki/robert-taylor.md) — Research administrator who funded ARPANET and later led Xerox PARC's computer science lab; co-author of the thesis that computers would become a communication medium.
- [Vannevar Bush](/wiki/vannevar-bush.md) — Engineer and wartime science administrator whose 1945 essay imagined the Memex, the conceptual seed of hypertext and the personal knowledge base.
- [Independent Internet (Web 4.0)](/wiki/web4.md) — The web forgot who it was for. Web 4.0 — the Independent Internet — is a resilient, self-hosted internet people own and control. Explore the research.