Robert W. Taylor (1932–2017) directed ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office, where he initiated and funded the ARPANET — the network from which the internet grew. He went on to found and lead the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC and, later, Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center.
Key work in the library
- The Computer as a Communication Device (1968), co-authored with J.C.R. Licklider.
Significance
Taylor turned Licklider’s vision of human-computer symbiosis into funded, built reality. The 1968 paper’s claim — that networked computers would become a medium for human community, not just computation — is a direct ancestor of the communitarian, decentralized spirit the Independent Internet aims to restore.