The Palm Team

91自拍 Trustee Eileen Fagan introduced the Palm Team鈥�Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan鈥攚ho were being recognized for 鈥渄evelopment of groundbreaking, commercially successful handheld computers and smartphones, which established the foundation for today鈥檚 mobile computing.鈥�

Rob Haitani, senior UX design manager for Ring and also at Palm and Handspring, presented the Fellow Awards to the Palm Team. He credited Jeff with teaching him that creativity is 鈥渁n act of reduction鈥� to reveal new possibilities, Donna with guiding teams through the precarious startup years with empathy, and Ed with leading marketing with insight, humor, and a 鈥渟ense of controlled insanity.鈥� Their complementary strengths, he said, drove Palm and Handspring鈥檚 success and made people feel they were part of something that truly mattered.

Ed Colligan accepts his 2026 91自拍 Fellow Award.

Accepting his award, Colligan emphasized the extraordinary teams at Palm and Handspring, who created many of the ideas and core design elements that shaped the mobile devices we use today鈥攋oking that it might be their fault if no one makes eye contact at family dinners anymore. He appreciated that the team award pushed back against the industry鈥檚 growing obsession with the 鈥渓one genius鈥� and invited Palm and Handspring alumni in the room to stand and be recognized.

Donna Dubinsky accepts her 2026 91自拍 Fellow Award.

Dubinsky reflected on what it truly means to operate at the frontier鈥攊ntensely competitive, filled with highs and lows. For her, the greatest highs came from seeing their product being used 鈥渋n the wild鈥� by someone who was not a friend or family member. The lows included technical failures, vendor problems, recessions, and hard decisions. Courage, resilience, persistence, adaptability, and flexibility were the only ways to overcome the barriers inherent in creating something truly new. In the end, she said, the chance to have an impact on people鈥檚 lives has been the thrill of a lifetime.

Jeff Hawkins accepts his 2026 91自拍 Fellow Award.

Hawkins noted that entrepreneurs don鈥檛 invent the future so much as they see it coming and “help it arrive a little sooner and a little better.” His epiphany in 1991 was the idea of a computer in your pocket that could access information about the world. Technology had to evolve to eventually make that possible, but the human desire for information has always powered innovation. He reflected on the unanticipated consequences that once people had constant access to information, some chose to make it addictive鈥攁 problem the world is only now beginning to reckon with. But, he believes the overall impact of these devices has been profoundly positive.

John Chowning

John Chowning was recognized 鈥渇or the invention of audio FM synthesis, which transformed the musical landscape using computers.鈥�

Chris Chafe, professor and chair of the Music Department at Stanford University presented the Fellow Award to Chowning, who he called 鈥渁n inventor and musician with an insatiable appetite for new ideas.鈥� The experiments on electronic music that Chowning began in the 1960s laid the foundation for entire fields at the intersection of art and science, ideas that are now so embedded in contemporary music that they are nearly ubiquitous. In 1974, he cofounded the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), a magnet for extraordinary talent nurtured by Chowning鈥檚 deep commitment to mentorship.

John Chowning accepts his 2026 91自拍 Fellow Award.

Accepting the award, Chowning described how his work and that of others has democratized computer music, starting with a collaboration with Yamaha engineers in the late 鈥�70s and early 鈥�80s that produced the first low-cost digital synthesizer. Today, FM synthesis lives on in software embedded throughout digital music production. He noted that technological impact is unpredictable, but in the age of AI, he believes that music resists shortcuts and that aesthetics are difficult to quantify. Transcending language and serving as a powerful bond across cultures, music reminds us, said Chowning, of the enduring importance of marrying technology with the humanities.

Brewster Kahle

Before Brewster Kahle received his award, musician and humanitarian Peter Gabriel offered a special recorded congratulations for Kahle’s profound and important work opening access to the world鈥檚 digital history.

Kahle was honored 鈥渇or pioneering roles in online search engines, and in digital preservation and open access to knowledge provided by the Internet Archive.鈥�

Mitch Kapor, founding partner at Kapor Capital and 1996 91自拍 Fellow, presented the Fellow Award, noting that Kahle鈥檚 work reflects a clear and consistent belief that knowledge is a public good that should be open and accessible. That commitment was already evident in the 1980s at Thinking Machines and at WAIS Inc., where his work anticipated many of the core functions of today鈥檚 web and helped lay the conceptual groundwork for our contemporary information ecosystem. His vision expanded dramatically in 1996 with the founding of the Internet Archive, now the world鈥檚 leading digital repository. The Archive made it possible to preserve a historical record of the web that would otherwise have vanished. Beyond preservation, his efforts have continually advanced digital rights.

Brewster Kahle accepts his 2026 91自拍 Fellow Award.

Accepting the award, Kahle explained that he has found meaning in his life by following the advice to do something that matters, even if you know you鈥檒l never finish it. For him, that meant pursuing the dream of universal access to human knowledge. He has pursued technology that made people smarter, more capable, and more informed, as well as open systems that people could trust and build on. He believes that one of today鈥檚 great challenges is figuring out how to harness new AI capabilities in an environment that鈥檚 increasingly dominated by monopolies. The question, he says, is whether the ecosystem stays open enough to benefit everyone.

Mark Stevens

Eileen Fagan introduced the new Silicon Valley Laureate Award, which honors leaders who have made an enduring and positive impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystem that has enabled Silicon Valley鈥檚 leadership in today鈥檚 digital age. Venture capitalist Mark Stevens received the award “for early and enduring investments in transformative technology companies, and for shaping the entrepreneurial ecosystem that powers the modern digital economy and era of artificial intelligence.”

Presenting the award, Fagan noted Stevens’s early investments in Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and Nvidia while a partner at Sequoia Capital and his mentorship of entrepreneurs at S-Cubed Capital today.

Mark Stevens accepts his 91自拍 award for the 2026 Silicon Valley Laureate.

In 1989, when he began his career in venture capital, said Stevens, it was still a tiny corner of the global financial system. Don Valentine and Pierre Lamond at Sequoia Capital took a chance on him and subjected him to an intense鈥攁nd unforgettable鈥攖utelage. Looking back over his 45-year career in technology, he believes we haven鈥檛 seen anything yet. Although he has been deeply involved in AI, the speed and magnitude of its growth have been astonishing, and he believes the world will be largely unrecognizable a decade from now. Silicon Valley will continue at the forefront of this technological shift as it has for every other. But leadership brings responsibility, and we cannot afford complacency or arrogance, said Stevens. We must actively nourish entrepreneurship, protect the ecosystem that enables it, and earn the right to continue to be the place to build the future.

Power the Future

Marc Etkind closed the evening by launching the public phase of 91自拍鈥檚 capital campaign, Power On: Decoding the Past, Igniting the Future. With the help of generous donors, the Museum has already been able to make an impact. Learn more and contribute by June 30, 2026, to support 91自拍 as a trusted voice during this time of ever-accelerating change.

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91自拍 honored the exceptional achievements of the Museum鈥檚 2024 Fellows on November 16, 2024 in a special ceremony and gala at the Museum.

Allan Alcorn, Nolan Bushnell, Steven Mayer, Elizabeth 鈥淛ake鈥� Feinler, and Jensen Huang were honored for their outstanding merit and significant contributions to the advancement of computing and the evolution of the digital age. They join other extraordinary individuals in the 91自拍 Hall of Fellows.

91自拍 President and CEO Dan’l Lewin speaks at the 2024 Fellow Awards.

91自拍 President and CEO Dan鈥檒 Lewin opened the evening by noting that the impact of technology on humanity is the essence of the Fellow Awards, and at the heart of the Museum鈥檚 vision of a human-centered digital world, where everyone is served by technology.

After remarks by headline sponsor Oracle鈥檚 Andy Mendelsohn, who noted the impacts of the Fellows鈥� work on Oracle over the years, emcee and 91自拍 Trustee Erin Teague introduced the first three nominees.

Innovative Leisure

Atari鈥檚 Allan Alcorn, Nolan Bushnell, and Steven Mayer were honored for their pioneering role in the development of the video game and personal computing industries. They described their groundbreaking work in the early days at Atari, whose company motto was 鈥淚nnovative leisure,鈥� in a documentary video.

David Crane, cofounder of Activision, presented the award to the Atari team. A former programmer at Atari, he considers Allan Alcorn to be 鈥渢he engineer’s engineer鈥� whose technical expertise pervaded the company for years. It was Steven Mayer who pushed to combine early microprocessors with a general-purpose display circuit and chip in the Atari 2600 so that every game no longer had to have its own dedicated chip. This allowed the machine to dominate the video game market for over 10 years.

From the time he met Nolan Bushnell in the 鈥�70s, Crane felt he embodied the idea that technology could and should be fun. Nolan鈥檚 business decision to fund a project came down to only one reason鈥攖hat he found it 鈥渘eat.鈥� Fortunately, Crane notes, Nolan represented his target market and millions of others also found the ideas to be neat. Many projects were far ahead of their time and came about when the need and technologies converged, changing the world of technology-based entertainment forever.

The Atari team receives their Fellow Awards. From left: Steven Mayer, Nolan Bushnell, and Allan Alcorn.

Allan Alcorn thanked colleagues and mentors who pushed him to do things that he didn鈥檛 believe he could do. He noted that technology is a powerful tool and made a plea for ethical progress.

Following Alcorn, with his trademark humor, Nolan Bushnell described his lifelong passion for electronics and his work on gamified education today. He also offered plenty of advice, including to gain a variety of skills, be tenacious and resilient, and give back by thinking of something bigger than yourself and trying to fix problems in the world. 鈥淥ptimism is the driver of the future,鈥� said Nolan.

Steven Mayer compared Nolan to the leader of the band and Al as the drummer. His advice to people entering the gaming field: Find the music you want to play, master your instrument, find fellow band members you respect, find your audience, and be willing to work for tips.

Paper Lover

Elizabeth 鈥淛ake鈥� Feinler was honored for inspiring and creative leadership of the鈥疦etwork Information Centers鈥痶hat鈥痟elped shape鈥痶oday鈥檚 internet.

Steve Crocker, a key player in the creation of ARPANET protocols, presented the award to Jake. He said that Jake embodied three key attributes: the orientation and skill of an information scientist; zeal and energy; and, a deep set of humanitarian values. She mentored and included women and minorities in her group.

Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler holds her 2024 91自拍 Fellow Award.

In her remarks, Jake noted that she was a long-time 91自拍 volunteer, and since her friends say she never saw a piece of paper she didn鈥檛 like, she was able to donate 400 boxes of internet archives to the Museum. Jake described her work at the NIC and how the growth of the internet eventually led to the domain system. Calling the internet today the Wild West, where you find misinformation, conspiracies, scams, pornography, spying on users, and AI fraud, she called for open, fair, reliable protocols and rules to make the internet work better for everyone.

History in the Making

Cofounder, President and CEO of NVIDIA Jensen Huang was honored for visionary leadership in the advancement of devices and systems for computer graphics, accelerated computing, and artificial intelligence.

Jensen鈥檚 mentor, Morris Chang, the founder and former chairman and CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), sent video congratulations. He recounted how Jensen first reached out to him in 1997 to ask TSMC to manufacture their new GPU chip. The two continued their relationship and innovative partnership for decades. 鈥淵ou are a maker of computer history yourself,鈥� he said to Jensen.

Mark Stevens, managing partner at S-Cubed Capital, and an early investor in NVIDIA and board member, presented the award to Jensen. He described the three phases of the company鈥檚 development from the 1990s to the present, moving from a focus on delivering high-quality 3D graphics to the Windows PC platform, through the launch of the first graphical processing unit (GPU), to powering the AI industrial revolution today. The processing power of NVIDIA鈥檚 GPU has far surpassed Moore鈥檚 Law. Stevens credited Jensen鈥檚 technical prowess and leadership in building a unique and enduring culture for the company鈥檚 success. Jensen, he said, is fearless.

Jensen Huang gives his acceptance speech for his Fellow Award.

In his acceptance speech, Jensen explained that when he and his cofounders started the company in the early 1990s, their vision was to reinvent the personal computer with capabilities that were then available only in supercomputers, including high-quality video graphics that could be used for things like gaming. He noted that the GPU they created is the first other processor in the computer besides the microprocessor that is programmable by software, and it was controversial when it was released. Today, for the first time in history, we can imagine accelerating solutions to the most daunting problems, like climate change, life-saving drugs and solving inflation. 鈥淭he next ten years,鈥� said Jensen, 鈥渨e鈥檙e not going to want to miss.鈥�

Dan鈥檒 Lewin closed out the program on a personal note, announcing his retirement after nearly seven years as president and CEO of 91自拍. The audience took a moment of silence to recognize the passing this year of Chester Gordon Bell, a key figure in the Museum鈥檚 early days.

Of course, the Fellow Awards could not have happened without the support of 91自拍’s generous sponsors.

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鈥淧eople are at the heart of the story of technology,鈥� said 91自拍 President and CEO Dan鈥檒 Lewin, as he kicked off the annual Fellow Awards ceremony this year. And 91自拍鈥檚 2023 Fellows certainly are remarkable people.

Rodney Brooks, Thomas E. Kurtz, and Barbara Liskov were honored for their outstanding merit and significant contributions to the advancement of computing and the evolution of the digital age. They join 95 other remarkable individuals in the 91自拍 Hall of Fellows.

Tom Stuermer, senior managing director of data and AI at Accenture, expressed an optimistic anticipation of technology’s evolving narrative as he acknowledged the Fellows’ contributions. Headline sponsor Accenture鈥檚 sustained collaboration with 91自拍 represents a 鈥渟hared duty to steer these transformations and these forces towards a brighter future for us all,鈥� he said.

Tom Stuermer, senior managing director of data and AI at Accenture.

A video tribute to the Fellows included remarks from science and technology journalist John Markoff, who noted that all three simplified computing with their work and thus extended the reach of the field from a narrow circle to a much broader community, democratizing it in the process. Megan Smith, who served as the 3rd chief technology officer of the US, noted that people from all over the world can now see themselves in the industry. And, venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson lauded the honorees for taking on bold challenges and inspiring those who want to see change in the world.

Rodney Brooks

Cohost and 91自拍 Trustee Eileen Fagan introduced Rodney Brooks, who has dedicated his life to pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence and robotics in a career that鈥檚 been 鈥渁 testament to relentless innovation.鈥� His contributions include new methods of robot perception, enabling machines to sense and interact with their environment in ways previously unimaginable. His research has influenced applications in space, health care, autonomous vehicles, and other areas and continues to shape the future of robotics.

In a brief documentary created from 91自拍’s recent oral history interview with Brooks, he spoke about his life and career.

A former doctoral student of Brooks, and now dean and professor at MIT, Cynthia Breazeal presented the award to Brooks 鈥淔or the advancement of robotics and consideration of its implications for humanity.鈥� She remembered that Brooks asked his students how much computational power they thought a fly possessed and noted that 鈥渘ature, not symbols, was Rodney鈥檚 muse.鈥� Despite intense criticism, he took a bottom-up approach to research, believing that intelligent life could emerge from simple, interactive, specialized behaviors. A fearless advocate of women in the field, he seeks to inspire others to do good.

In his acceptance speech, Brooks shared memories of working on robots at MIT and his thoughts on the current hype around AI. He traces his success and outlook on life back to his childhood.

Brooks is an optimist and still fearless. He is currently at his sixth startup, working hard on a new class of robots and believes there’s much more invention to be done and fun to be had.

Thomas E. Kurtz

Dan鈥檒 Lewin introduced Thomas E. Kurtz, best known as a co-creator of the BASIC programming language, which played a pivotal role in making computers more accessible. The development of the Dartmouth time-sharing system revolutionized how computers were used in education. A brief documentary explained how.

By video, Bill Gates presented the award to Kurtz 鈥淔or the co-invention of the BASIC programming language, which brought the power of computers to beginners around the world, and the Dartmouth Timesharing System.鈥� Gates remarked that he did all his early programming in BASIC and a form of it was included in Microsoft computers from the very beginning.

Accepting the award for Kurtz, who was unable to attend in person, was his granddaughter, data scientist Sarai Mazyck. She shared his memories of traveling once a week from New Hampshire to Boston to have punch cards processed on MIT鈥檚 new computer. That ended when Dartmouth got its own computer in 1959, and Kurtz and John Kemeny collaborated to bridge the divide between the sciences and humanities by encouraging liberal arts students to 鈥渉ave a go at computing.鈥� That was the motivation for developing a simple, easy-to-use programming language as well as a time-sharing system.

Kurtz summed up the two guiding principles of his work: 1.) systems should be extremely easy for the casual user; and, 2.) always choose simplicity over efficiency.

Barbara Liskov

Eileen Fagan introduced Barbara Liskov, whose groundbreaking work laid the foundation for many software systems and elevated the principles of modularity, extensibility, and robustness in software design. She was among the first women to earn a doctorate in computer science in the US and only the second woman to receive the Turing Award.

Liskov’s groundbreaking career was explored in a short documentary.

Tech entrepreneur and Chair Emerita of the MIT Corporation Diane Greene presented the award to Liskov 鈥淔or practical and theoretical contributions to programming language and system design that continue to shape modern computing.鈥� She noted that Liskov saw the leverage in making it easier for everyone to build software and solved limitations in abstraction and distributed computing, as well as developing protocols for dealing with malicious attacks, among other contributions.

Liskov accepted the award, and in her remarks credited a 鈥渓ucky break鈥� for the start of her career in 1961. A Berkeley graduate with a degree in math, she was offered a job as a programmer at a time when she didn鈥檛 know computers existed. She discovered a field she loved that fit her skills. Another lucky break didn鈥檛 look like one at the time.

Liskov remarked that she and others in the field have had a huge impact on people, that she believes has been mostly for the good. Looking to the future, she thinks that many issues arising around AI have technical solutions that can mitigate problems like bias and misinformation.

Inspiring the Next Generation

The event closed by noting that the three honorees鈥� words of advice to the next generation could be combined in a powerful statement full of wisdom and life experience: Through the beauty and power of mathematics (Kurtz) we can strive to be fearless (Brooks) and stay open to the full breadth (Liskov) of opportunities around us.

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91自拍 Fellows are nominated in a public process and selected by a distinguished committee that includes past Fellow Award honorees. Learn more.

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Congratulations to our new 2022 Fellows!

On October 15, 91自拍 recognized the achievements of four honorees whose creativity, persistence, vision, and global influence in the field of computing have helped shape our everyday lives. Nominated in a public process, they were selected by a distinguished committee that includes past Fellow Award honorees.

Tech leaders, innovators, and visionaries from around the world gathered to celebrate and offer tributes to Don Bitzer, Adele Goldberg, Dan Ingalls, and Leonard Kleinrock. Here are some highlights from one of Silicon Valley鈥檚 longest traditions, cohosted by 91自拍 President and CEO Dan鈥檒 Lewin and Laurie Yoler, General Partner at Playground Global. The event was made possible by the generous support of headline sponsor Accenture.

Don Bitzer

The first honoree, Don Bitzer, was recognized for pioneering online education and communities with PLATO and coinventing the plasma display.

Mladen Vouk, his colleague at North Carolina State University, noted that Don tackles difficult problems with creativity, gusto, and always a smile. 2021 Fellow Ray Ozzie presented the award to his former teacher.

In his remarks, Don said that in creating PLATO, with its innovative courseware language, touchscreen, and multimedia terminals, he and his team imagined what they would need into the future鈥攁nd they achieved it. But sometimes it鈥檚 dangerous to be able to do new things.

91自拍, says Don, teaches that the creative development of ideas takes time and perseverance and people working together. Only then can the rocketships of Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy鈥檚 smart watch, or the sci-fi tech of Star Trek perhaps become reality.

Adele Goldberg

Next up, Adele Goldberg was honored for the promotion and codevelopment of the Smalltalk programming environment and for contributions that advanced the use of computers in education.鈥��

In paying tribute to Adele, 91自拍 Trustee John Mashey noted that 鈥淎lmost every computing device people use owes something to Adele鈥檚 lifelong PEP.鈥� John Shoch, cofounder of Alloy Ventures, who was responsible for introducing Adele and Alan Kay, presented the award.

In her acceptance remarks, Adele spoke about working at Xerox PARC on innovative ideas like Notetaker, a system called Twinkle, and of course Smalltalk, which she took out of the lab and into the world.

Adele believes that life is not a plan you make and execute but rather a series of opportunities. She鈥檚 a self-motivated learner whose experience has shown her what’s needed for modeling the physical and social worlds with tech鈥攖he vision of Alan Kay鈥檚 Dynabook still yet to be fully realized.

Dan Ingalls

Dan Ingalls was honored for the creation and codevelopment of the Smalltalk language and programming environment.

Gilad Bracha, Technical Fellow at F5, first learned Smalltalk in 1984 and fell in love with it, appreciating that early introduction to object-oriented programming throughout his career.听Ted Kaehler, a longtime colleague from PARC, presented the award to Dan, crediting him with a genius for choosing ambitious goals and being an extraordinary leader, open to contributions from everyone, and bringing out the best in his teammates.

Dan says it was luck that brought him to Xerox PARC in 1971, and there he 鈥渂reathed inspiration.鈥�

Dan credited Xerox management for standing by through five generations of Smalltalk until it was a commercially acceptable language, and he expressed gratitude to the people in the many small teams he worked with throughout his career.

Leonard Kleinrock

Leonard Kleinrock was honored for his pioneering work on the mathematical theory of computer networks and roles in the ARPANET and in expanding the internet.鈥�

Nick McKeown, a senior vice president at Intel, claims Leonard’s book on queuing theory changed his life as a PhD. Hearing Len give a talk about the power of the network, he was struck by Len鈥檚 simple principle to avoid congestion on the internet: 鈥淜eep the pipes full, just full, but no fuller.鈥� Academic colleague Jim Kurose presented the award, noting how Len鈥檚 work has touched hundreds of thousands鈥攑erhaps millions鈥攚ho have been students in his classes and read his books and papers.

Len stressed that the creation of the internet was a joint effort by an army of pioneers. But, the technology was preceded by earlier visionaries, who imagined many aspects of today鈥檚 globally connected world, like Nicola Tesla, HG Wells, Vannevar Bush, and more. The world had to wait for the technology to catch up to the vision. Len is a strong believer in the value of joining theory and real-world applications. And also in the inspiration of . . . poetry.

Len鈥檚 final message was a reminder of how necessary it is for today’s innovators to carry their vision as far as they can and then to pass it along to the next generation. An important message indeed.

In Closing

Dan鈥檒 Lewin reminded the audience that history is really about the present having a conversation with the past. Building on the world-changing contributions of all of our Fellows, we must continue to inspire and empower new generations to use technology to shape a better future.

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On December 9, 2021, the 91自拍 celebrated Lillian Schwartz for her pioneering work at the intersection of art and computing. During a long and productive career, Lillian created an extraordinary series of art films with early computer animation technology. The fourth and final Fellow to be honored this year, she joins a distinguished group of tech pioneers who have been inducted into 91自拍鈥檚 Hall of Fellows.

The virtual program was kicked off by 91自拍 President and CEO Dan鈥檒 Lewin, who gave a preview of the remarkable “digital twin” of 91自拍 being developed by headline sponsor Accenture. Joined by 91自拍 trustee and cohost Andy Cunningham, founder of Cunningham Collective and Zero1, the inspiring event that showcased Lillian’s significant contributions to art and computing.

Enjoy some highlights from the show!

Experimentation

In the 1960s, computers were primarily used by large corporations and few people had ever seen one. In the art world, artists were exploring new mediums and techniques, and Lillian Schwartz was part of a community of both artists and technologists. Her multimedia, interactive sculpture听Proxima Centauri was exhibited in 1968, in a now famous Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age.听听

At the exhibit opening, Lillian met Leon Harmon, a scientist at Bell Laboratories, who invited her to come to the lab to try out a graphics program. She did, and then stayed for a decades-long residency. At Bell Labs, IBM’s 7094 mainframe was being used to create two dimensional art, computer animation, and computer-generated music. Lillian worked with computer scientist Ken Knowlton to make software to express her creative vision, and her art films of the 1970s were shown widely in museums to great acclaim.

Months of painstaking work, including hand-painted imagery, resulted in just minutes of a computer animated film. Here’s an excerpt from Lillian’s 1970 film, Pixillation, with music by Gershon Kingsley.

Innovation

What we now know as computer art began with Lillian, says Dr. Zabet Patterson of Stony Brook University, who wrote a book on Bell Labs and the origins of computer art. She describes how Lillian was dazzled by the computers’ arrays of flickering lights on her first day at Bell Labs.听

Lillian experimented with combining elements of painting and computer graphics and she also wrote programs and created editing techniques and color filters. She invented new ways of analyzing and generating images, and her “ingratitude” for existing technology challenged engineers and scientists to push the boundaries of the possible. Her films and graphics remain foundational works, collected by renowned art museums around the world.听

Curiosity

Even before she went to Bell Labs, Lillian had used novel materials in her work, particularly her sculptures. Her curiosity compelled her to learn the traditional method and then “push the medium,” and it was this interest in experimentation that led her to technology.

Distinguished curator and video and media art expert Barbara London worked at MOMA for three decades and has known Lillian since the 1970s. She offered a tribute to Lillian’s ingenuity and noted how she navigated the exciting and constantly evolving terrain of digital art at a time when computers were the size of a room and existed in an almost exclusively male domain. “Lillian has managed to make breakthroughs with every medium she has ever handled,” London said, and in doing so expanded others’ perceptions and knowledge of the world.

Courage

Lillian’s life and career is all the more remarkable considering her serious physical challenges and the bigotry and sexism she faced.听

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1927, Lillian was the youngest of 13 children. Hardship forced them to work at a young age, and they were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks, but Lillian created art however she could, even sculpting with bread dough. She became a US cadet nurse, and she and her husband, a doctor, were stationed in Fukuoka, Japan, after World War II, where she contracted polio.

Creativity

Legendary programmer and 91自拍 Fellow Ken Thompson, a colleague of Lillian’s at Bell Labs, presented the award. The two were also neighbors and first met when Ken went to investigate the model of Spock’s brain Lillian was showing the neighborhood kids on Halloween. He recalled how she created a massive mobile from broken disc packs and magnetic tape at Bell Labs.

In her acceptance speech, Lillian thanked the scientists who helped her make the computer a tool for her art.

Collaboration

Artists and technologists continue to collaborate today. World-renowned digital artist Refik Anadol and David Luebke, vice president of graphics research for Nvidia, shared how they’re building on Lillian’s legacy. Anadol creates immersive environments using “data as a pigment,” as he explains, to engage in digital painting. Luebke’s field of 3D graphics empowers artists with technologies like graphics cards and algorithms to train computer models.

Anadol believes that anything we can compute or quantify, including wind patterns and Wi-Fi signals, can become a pigment for an imagined work. In this way, says Luebke, the artist acts like a curator, thinking about the specific data to collect and use. It’s very similar to creating a training set for artificial intelligence, and inspires engineers to build new tools for artists. Watch the video below from 7:58 to see what Anadol has created with Nvidia’s StyleGAN.

Change

Collaborations between humans and machines will continue to multiply opportunities in art as well as many other fields of endeavor. Inspired by the courage, curiosity, and creativity in which Lillian Schwartz embraced new tools and new ideas, we can look forward to our changing technological future.

And, we can take to heart her one word of advice: “Experiment.”

For all footage from 91自拍’s December 9 event, 鈥淏reaking Boundaries: Celebrating Creativity With Computer Art Pioneer Lillian F. Schwartz,鈥� video extras, and related content, visit our dedicated page to 2021 91自拍 Fellow Lillian Schwartz.

91自拍 the 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards

The 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards marks the Museum鈥檚 first-ever virtual Fellow Awards. 91自拍 will celebrate the 2021 Fellows in a yearlong four-part series of thought-provoking virtual events and engaging digital content that explores the story and impact of each honoree and the present and future of tech for humanity.

Learn more about this year鈥檚 honorees and the听2021 Fellow Awards.

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I remain a techno-optimist, but as our field matures unbridled techno-solutionism can be na茂ve and even harmful. We must adopt a more tempered, systemic concern with socially responsible computing.

鈥� Andries van Dam

Visualizing A Better Future

At first glance Andy van Dam’s career seems a patchwork. He’s made major contributions to graphics, hypermedia, courseware, electronic publishing, and teaching. But then you realize that for him, these are all facets of a single quest dating back more than 50 years: to apply the power of interactive computers to the basic ways we learn and create. And even more important, to explore these topics not off in some isolated lab鈥攂ut with a rotating cast of brilliant undergraduates at the heart of a teaching university.

The grail of this quest is a vision of fully interactive documents, ones with graphics and other media we can play with, tease apart, and experiment on rather than simply study. He says he鈥檚 not quite there yet.

Andy was among the 1960s pioneers who defined the basic ways we use computers today: clickable links and word processing, interactive graphics and electronic books, graphical interfaces and flexible courseware. But where visionaries like Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart had their eyes on global publishing or accelerating cultural evolution itself, Andy’s goals were more immediate. The systems he built with and for his students solved problems one at a time, and each fed into the design of the next. But as this timeline shows, that didn’t make them less influential.

Finding A Home

When Andries van Dam was nine months old, his parents moved from their native Netherlands to Indonesia (formerly the Dutch East Indies). Soon World War II broke out. Andy and his mother were interned in a Japanese concentration camp for over three years, where malnutrition and disease killed many. His father was in an even harsher work camp. Only after the war did his parents know whether the other was alive. But when they returned to the Netherlands they discovered the rest of their extended family were victims of the Holocaust.

In 1952, Andy鈥檚 family emigrated to the United States where his father worked at Wood鈥檚 Hole Oceanographic Institution. Andy was 13. Like his parents he felt he owed it to those who had died to make the most of his opportunities. He took a string of part-time jobs in the food industry, a delight after his malnourished childhood, and asked for a typing course as a Bar Mitzvah present. With his newly acquired English language he wrote a prize-winning essay for the American Legion on why he was proud to be an American.

When he attended Swarthmore College, Andy met two fellow students who would change his life: his future wife Debbie and an older student, Ted Nelson, who would pioneer hypertext. Ted cast Andy and Debbie in his student show, likely the first rock opera.

In 1960, Andy began graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, first in electronics and then on computerized information retrieval within the newly formed computer science department. But then he saw a film about Ivan Sutherland’s groundbreaking graphics program, Sketchpad, and he switched to computer graphics for his doctorate.

1940

Andy as a toddler with his mother in Jakarta, 1940. His parents had moved there from the Netherlands for his father鈥檚 job as a marine biologist but were then caught up by the Japanese occupation. Courtesy Andy van Dam

1948

Andy (right) with his parents and baby sister in the Netherlands, 1948. They were part of a tiny postwar Jewish community, and Andy’s parents fought a long legal battle to reclaim their house from Nazi collaborators who had appropriated it. Andy had to learn the basics of being a Dutch child, from traditional songs and stories to wearing uncomfortable wooden clogs. Courtesy Andy van Dam

1959

Andy and future wife Debbie on the Swarthmore campus, 1958. She studied French and would make a career teaching it as a high school subject. The couple would have three daughters. Courtesy Andy van Dam

1960

Future hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson, circa 1960. Ted’s rock musical was titled “Anything and Everything.” A year older than Andy, he was son of movie star Celeste Holm. Ted was bursting with ideas for everything from new kinds of movies to ways of organizing information. Swarthmore Bulletin

1963

Andy’s master’s thesis dealt with improved schemes for sorting and searching aperture cards. These were a literal hybrid of analog and digital鈥攎icrofilm embedded in a computer-sortable punched card. Large institutions used them to store millions of images in room-sized installations, from blueprints to photographs.

1964

The Art of Teaching

Meanwhile, Andy鈥檚 wife Debbie was teaching high school French. He wondered…could he teach high school kids computing, at the time a graduate level subject? It worked, he loved teaching, and he became a professor instead of pursuing his original goal of doing research in industry.

Brown University hadn’t been at the top of Andy’s list. But he was impressed by the school’s emphasis on teaching鈥�the chairman of the department excused himself from Andy’s interview to teach a freshman class.

Against convention, Andy began using undergraduates as teaching and research assistants, including many women. Each year’s TAs would train the next. He organized skits and other fun activities for team-building.

Andy was asked by a major publisher to turn his 1966 thesis into a very early graphics textbook. But he had no time. He recruited James Foley as coauthor, and over the next decade they wrote the “bible” for hundreds of thousands of graphics students and practitioners.

In 1967 Andy co-founded the predecessor to the leading graphics professional organization SIGGRAPH. In the 1970s, Andy and his graphics students would help pioneer the first international graphics standards.

1966

Andy was asked to turn his 1966 thesis into a very early graphics textbook, but had no time. He recruited James Foley (right) as coauthor, and over a dozen years they wrote the core text for hundreds of thousands of graphics students and practitioners. Two editions with a growing pool of coauthors would follow. Courtesy Jim Foley.

Pioneering With Students

Years after attending Swarthmore, Andy and Ted Nelson reconnected at a 1967 computer conference. Ted wowed Andy with a vision of a connected world using computers鈥�like the web today plus more. A core concept was the now familiar clickable link, which can join not just words but pictures and video too.

With Andy’s undergraduates, Andy and Ted built the Hypertext Editing System (HES) in 1967, one of the very first hypertext programs as well as one of the first word processors. It was a compromise between Ted’s global hypertext vision, which he called Xanadu, and Andy’s wish to also develop something useful for producing printed documents. The Apollo moon program was one user.

The next year, Andy was blown away by Doug Engelbart’s famous demo of his oNLine System (NLS). He got students working on a successor to HES he called FRESS, combining the best of Ted and Doug’s ideas plus their own.

These were the start of 56 years鈥�and counting鈥�of cutting-edge projects Andy would do with his students, in effect creating an ongoing research lab powered largely by bright, motivated undergraduates guided by several doctoral and masters students. As Andy proudly says, “I’ve never done anything on my own. I’ve always relied on students.”

1967

In 1967, Andy cofounded the predecessor to the leading graphics organization and conference, SIGGRAPH. His role was later recognized with this 1998 “baseball card.” Courtesy Andy van Dam

1968

Andy at Brown with graphics terminal and star graphics students Rice, Carmody, and Gross. All three would also help create the Hypertext Editing System (HES). From the beginning, Andy had great fun with his students, both because that鈥檚 who he is as a person and because it leavens the hard intellectual work they do together. Courtesy Andy van Dam.

Andy demonstrating Hypertext Editing System (HES), which he and his students based on the work and help of visionary hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson. In modern terms, it felt like a word processor that also let you add and follow the kind of clickable hypertext links we use on the web. HES got newspaper and even TV coverage. Courtesy Andy van Dam

Detail of light pen on HES screen, a $200,000 (at the time!) IBM 2250 graphics terminal. Light pens served as pointing devices, like the mouse. Sponsor IBM offered to help commercialize HES, and early venture capitalists were interested, but Ted Nelson and Andy didn’t reach agreement. Courtesy Norm Meyrowitz

1969

FRESS combined and extended Andy’s favorite features from HES and Engelbart’s NLS. The most important was to follow NLS by adding multiple users, which allowed online collaboration. FRESS had an acronym, but was really named after fresser鈥�German/Yiddish for glutton鈥�since it was such a memory hog. It used 128K of RAM, a quarter of the IBM mainframe鈥檚 memory! Note that this screenshot is of FRESS running in an emulator on modern equipment. Courtesy Norm Meyrowitz

1974

1975

The cutting-edge Brown University Graphics System (BUGS) created by Andy and students from 1965 on included powerful custom hardware like Hal Webber’s mid-1970s Simale, pictured, to quickly calculate shapes in 3D, a basic function for manipulating 3D graphics. Simale could also handle 4D, making it popular with mathematicians. Starting in the late 1970s, Andy and his students helped spearhead the first major efforts to create international standards for computer graphics. Courtesy Hal Webber

1980

Started in the late 1970s, the Electronic Document System for Navy technicians combined visual hypertext with color graphics. Designed for teaching, it dynamically adapted its content to the student’s level and progress. Pictured is the mockup for a laptop-like reader, just a bit chunkier than the Chromebook your child may take to school today. By Gregory Lloyd – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

1982

Early workstations like Apollos offered graphical displays only found on $100,000 terminals five years before. While still pricey, they let Brown鈥檚 CS department experiment with Professor Bob Sedgewick’s ideas for a fully electronic classroom, pictured鈥�a radical idea in the early 1980s. It was the start of an initiative called the “Scholar’s Workstation.” Courtesy Andy van Dam

1983

When the Apple Macintosh made graphics affordable, Andy and Norm Meyrowitz worked with 91自拍鈥檚 CEO Dan鈥檒 Lewin, then at Apple, to create a discount program for student purchase. Andy鈥檚 former student Andy Hertzfeld (right, at Woz’s wedding) was a core Mac developer, and introduced Andy to Steve Jobs (left). They argued heatedly over the Mac’s lack of networking capabilities. Courtesy Andy Hertzfeld

1984

Andy cofounded IRIS (Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship) with faculty member Bill Shipp (seated) and former student Norm Meyrowitz. Their goal was bringing graphical computing to every discipline. Norm led other former students in creating hypermedia system Intermedia and later headed IRIS. Courtesy Andy van Dam

1987

Norm Meyrowitz’s cutting-edge multimedia hypertext program Intermedia was launched from IRIS. It ran under Apple UNIX on the Macintosh and inspired scholarly “webs” in English, Classics, Biology and other domains. Meyrowitz would later help pioneer Web multimedia. Courtesy Norm Meyrowitz

New Dimensions

When the internet took off in the 1990s, the once far-out clickable link Andy and Ted Nelson had demoed in 1967 became front page news. Hypertext, in the form of the web, had gone world-wide. The web itself had risen from the 1980s hypertext community first inspired by Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, Andy, and his former students.

Meanwhile multimedia, which was reaching crisp maturity on ever-faster PCs with CD-ROM drives, got knocked back to whatever simple images and sounds could trickle over a squawking dialup connection.

As the world shifted, Andy’s army of current and former students played various roles. One set was pivotal in the new online world, from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, to adding back multimedia with Shockwave and Flash, to helping shape the fundamental language (XML) that lies behind the pages we click on today. Others, along with Andy, turned away from the small computer screen to virtual reality, and touch interfaces, and table-sized installations.

1992

Andy has been involved in dozens of startups, most notably Electronic Book Technologies with former students Steve DeRose, Greg LLoyd, Jeff Vogel, Dave Sklar and others. EBT’s products combined electronic publishing with hypertext, a novel combination at the time, and influenced XML, the language of the modern web. Courtesy Norm Meyrowitz

1995

A number of Andy’s students were hired by Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, to do rendering software, modeling, and lighting for Toy Story and other groundbreaking films. Pixar was pivotal in the computer animation revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. On this page, Catmull and Pixar investor Steve Jobs handwrote their thanks to Andy. Courtesy Andy van Dam

2004

Starting in the 1980s, Intermedia and IRIS helped kick off hypertext literature at Brown and beyond. Most works remain firmly onscreen, but pictured is celebrated avant garde novelist Robert Coover (left) within an experiment in immersive 3D hypertext literature. The environment is Brown’s room-sized Virtual Reality CAVE. Courtesy Norm Meyrowitz

2010

Annual teaching assistant (TA) dinner at Andy’s house. In the last five years the number of TAs has doubled to 45. After 56 years, Andy’s interview process for new TAs is rigorous and finely honed, but he鈥檚 also willing to take a chance on people, sometimes accepting B students who鈥檝e worked hard. He seeks diversity in thinking as well as background. A portion of TAs go on to conduct research with Andy. Past TAs include nine heads of top CS departments, including MIT, Princeton, and the University of Washington. Courtesy Andy van Dam

2013

Andy as Daenerys, Mother of Dragons from the Game of Thrones series, in skit produced by teaching assistants for his introductory computer course. Andy has appeared as a witch, a rapper, and in many other roles. Courtesy Andy van Dam

2015

2016

Dash is a browser-based hypermedia system Andy and students have developed since 2017, drawing on his 50 years of electronic media experience. The class Andy teaches with former student Norm Meyrowitz teaches students to create their own hypertext systems, and to learn hypermedia authoring in Dash. Courtesy Andy van Dam

The Art of Team-Building

When Andy started using undergraduates as teaching assistants (UTAs) and research assistants in 1965, the practice was so controversial he disguised them as “graders” for a couple of years. Five annual UTAs a year has now become 45, most helping with Andy’s giant introductory course. The program has been inclusive from the start, training many hundreds of women and other underrepresented groups. Over the years, nearly half of Andy’s TAs have been female..

New teaching assistants go through a rigorous interviewing and training process by Andy and the current head TAs. Shared activities like kayaking and skits make them a team. The skits started in the early 1970s and are always written and performed by the TAs for the class, sometimes with Andy as a cameo performer.

Each year, a few undergraduate TAs or RAs continue working with Andy as an advisor and mentor. And a few of those become his collaborators and friends, pushing forward efforts that have helped make Brown CS鈥�and computing鈥�what they are today.

Many educators learn with their students. But Andy has developed this into a way of life, running what amounts to a rolling research lab for the last 50 years largely based on undergraduates.

2017

Andy and his wife and daughters Scuba dived as a family; he is also an avid hiker and mountain biker. Andy has explored the outdoors with generations of former students as well, backpacking the Grand Canyon in recent years. Sharing both physical and intellectual challenges is part of how he connects as a mentor. Courtesy Andy van Dam

Tech For Good

When Andy started out in his career hypertext, graphics, and online collaboration were new. As early as the 1970s he taught about ethical issues related to computing, but going from dream to global reality brought many unintended consequences, from fake news to worries about surveillance and the digital divide.

As part of a department-wide effort Andy is now including socially responsible computing topics with every course he teaches, getting students to think about the impact on society of what they create. Together they are thinking deeply about how technologies can be more inclusive and ethical, to benefit everyone.

2019

Announcement of socially responsible computing program, Brown Computer Science Department. The program adds special ethics and social impact courses, as mentioned in the announcement here, as well as embedding specially trained STAs (tbds) in computing courses on other topics. Courtesy of Brown University

Andy van Dam has led the way in promoting technology that serves humanity, infusing generations of computer scientists with his energy and vision of ethical tech that promotes the common good. And he isn’t finished yet.

To participate in 91自拍’s FREE September 23 event, Visualizing A Better Future: Celebrating 91自拍 Fellow Andy van Dam, register here.

91自拍 the 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards

The 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards marks the Museum鈥檚 first-ever virtual Fellow Awards. 91自拍 will celebrate the 2021 Fellows in a yearlong four-part series of thought-provoking virtual events and engaging digital content that explores the story and impact of each honoree and the present and future of tech for humanity.

Learn more about this year鈥檚 honorees and the听2021 Fellow Awards.

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The post Meet 2021 91自拍 Fellow Honoree Andy van Dam appeared first on 91自拍.

On March 18, 2021, in a dynamic virtual experience presented by headline sponsor Accenture, 91自拍 celebrated Raymond Ozzie for a lifetime of work in collaborative software and software entrepreneurship. Perhaps best-known as the creator of the much-loved, early collaboration software Lotus Notes, he also built a number of other companies and succeeded Bill Gates as Microsoft鈥檚 chief technology officer. The first of four Fellows to be honored this year, Ray Ozzie joins a distinguished group of tech pioneers who have been inducted into 91自拍鈥檚 Hall of Fellows over the last 30 years.

Accessible to a global audience for the first time, the virtual program drew attention to Ozzie鈥檚 significant contributions in computing history, explored how they鈥檝e manifested in our digital present, and looked ahead to the future. Along the way, we heard from those Ray has touched with his kindness, empathy, integrity, leadership, and, oh yes, skills as a technologist. Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, and Mitch Kapor shared memories and tributes along with countless friends and colleagues in a very active chat feed.

In case you missed it, here are some highlights from the show. Enjoy!

How It All Started

Ray credits the opportunity to use the computer-based teaching system PLATO at the University of Illinois in the early 1970s for sparking his life-long passion for technology and what it can do to bring people together. PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) gave him a glimpse into what the internet would become, with online gaming, discussion, community, and collaboration. He also had a life-altering experience collaborating remotely through PLATO with a fellow programmer who, Ray learned later, was a quadriplegic using a stick to type. Ray saw the potential of computers as different鈥攁nd special鈥攃ommunication tools.

One of Ray鈥檚 first jobs in the early 1980s was at startup Software Arts, which produced Visicalc, the first spreadsheet application for personal computers. Cofounders and 2004 91自拍 Fellows Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston were brilliant technologists, but more importantly for Ray, they ran the company as a family. He felt as if people cared about each other, there was no infighting, and everyone was moving in the same direction together through the ups and downs. Dan and Bob were also very generous with introductions in what was then a very small industry. It was through them that Ray met Microsoft cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and his team.

Dan Bricklin offered a tribute to Ray, noting his commitment to getting into the messy details and solving hard problems to build solid foundations for products, companies, and communities.

Ray鈥檚 Lotus Notes, built in the late 1980s, was asynchronous, distributed computing with public-key encryption and security built into the design of a robust, enterprise level system. For decades it prompted users to greet 鈥渂reakthrough鈥� products and features with, 鈥淣otes had that!鈥� Notes was a catalyst to the rapid adoption of the web and internet as we know it.

Building Teams and Companies

For most of his career, Ray worked for commercial enterprises, but the largest startup he founded was Groove Networks, which developed collaboration software. Microsoft bought the company and used the technology for SharePoint. Ray sees it as a great learning experience because he had to develop not only the technology, but also the go-to-market strategy.

Not many people know about Safecast, but it has created the largest citizen-science data set in existence today. Ray talks about its origins in the aftermath of the tsunami that resulted in the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The Safecast experience morphed into Ray鈥檚 current company, Blues Wireless, which develops small connected devices to embed in products to gather transparent feedback from customers.

When Ray鈥檚 company, Groove Networks, was bought by Microsoft, Ray became a chief technology office at the tech giant. A few months later, when Bill Gates left to devote his time to his foundation, Ray split his role with Craig Mundy, and became Microsoft鈥檚 chief technology officer, where he learned firsthand about change management in a very large organization. His colleague and now Microsoft vice president of AI and research, Lili Cheng, shared her experiences working with Ray.

Lili Cheng believes that Ray鈥檚 willingness to listen, the way he builds teams, how he thinks about and lives communication, his character and spirit all contribute to his innovative style and manifests in the products he builds.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Ray offered his own tribute to the incredible people in the tech industry, who he has learned from and watched pay it forward. He is most proud, he says, of how his successful companies and products have supported and affected people in their ecosystems as customers, suppliers, and employees, allowing them to earn money to put their kids through college, meet spouses at work, or touching their lives in an indirect way.

Ray is excited about the future, focusing on opportunities for IoT technologies (internet of things) to help us monitor and understand our environment to make it better by identifying polluters, for example, or to connect people with assets and supply chains that are visible and improve customer service. He believes the pandemic accelerated fundamental changes in how we work, in healthcare, in financial systems, and more, providing opportunities for entrepreneurs to change the landscape of the future.

As we think about that future, Ray offered a look back at his private collection, reminding us where today鈥檚 technologies came from.

For a Lifetime of Achievement

Ray Ozzie has devoted his life to building software and companies that connect people, helping them to collaborate for the greater good. His innovations underpin many of the technologies that shape our lives today. Where did his passion and energy come from and where did it take him? Ray tells us in his own words.

Two special guests offered their tributes to Ray and personal stories about him. The first, a billionaire today, said that Ray saved him from becoming a bartender.

The second special guest, a tech wunderkind, remembers Ray鈥檚 phenomenal recall of the digits of Pi.

Lotus cofounder and 91自拍 Fellow Mitch Kapor, who hired Ray and invested in Lotus Notes, presented the award. He believes that Ray鈥檚 integrity and their trust in each other were fundamental to their relationship and made all things possible.

Accepting the award, Ray thanked his 鈥渙ne of a kind鈥� wife, Dawna Bousquet, for always pushing him in the direction of what makes him happy rather than the easier path, risking failure as a serial entrepreneur over the decades. Ray described how his future career was shaped in childhood in his grandfather鈥檚 workshop.

After offering his gratitude to all those who taught him technology and leadership skills, inspired him to consider the impact of innovation, and instilled in him the idea that no vision is too large to be realized, Ray offered priceless advice to young people. Building can be the purest form of activism.

With those inspiring words, the audience was invited to join in a unique demonstration of tech collaboration in the arts. The world鈥檚 first beatbox champion, Butterscotch, used words from the audience in real time to compose the lyrics of an inspiring new song with a vision for the future.

Decoding Tech, Trust, and Connection

A panel discussion moderated by legendary tech journalist and Editor-at-Large for Wired Steven Levy explored issues and implications today of the connectivity revolution that Ray helped bring into being. The panel included Microsoft Partner Researcher, founder of Data and Society, and visiting NYU professor danah boyd; tech media pioneer Esther Dyson; and Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, and activist Baratunde Thurston.

鈥淗e didn鈥檛 just do collaboration software, he actually collaborated,鈥� said Esther Dyson of Ray Ozzie. 鈥淎nd, he understood that he was building the structure around collaboration among people.鈥� But, while connectivity has given us so much, in another way we have a nightmare on our hands, noted Levy, asking the panel what have we lost from the early days of systems like PLATO. For Thurston, what鈥檚 at issue is the tremendous concentration of power.

danah boyd noted that the internet has always been used for both good and bad. Tech mirrors and magnifies the culture, which is constantly being made and remade based on the (tech) tools we have around us. We can not assume that tech tools will create the networks and the culture we want for a healthy society.

Esther Dyson pointed out that human beings are vulnerable to short-term thinking, which may not actually serve us very well as a society. The internet creates a platform for everyone to be 鈥渞acing faster,鈥� but as a culture we need to think about how to get people to resist that and think more long-term, an issue that transcends the internet. Thurston argues that the individual can no longer 鈥渏ust say 鈥榥o鈥�.鈥� It鈥檚 not a fair fight when a person is up against concentrations of computing power and financial power using applied mathematics and behavioral science to direct our actions to what is no longer a real choice. Democracy is messy and requires engagement and negotiation, not just clicking to opt out of it. And, listen to the people who are telling us that not everything is alright for them to make a system that鈥檚 better for everyone. Dyson had an idea for how that might work: letting people pick their own algorithms.

Ray Ozzie joined the panel to share his thoughts on the evolution of the connectivity revolution that he helped to spark. For him, it鈥檚 been both foreseeable in some ways and surprising in others.

The panel as a whole echoed Ray鈥檚 hope that tool builders will work to solve the social and political problems that have developed as repercussions of the way that communications technologies have evolved. Thurston noted that the robots we feared have actually turned us into robots that serve them, with social norms mandating that we react to and manage data constantly and at high speed. Ray hopes that some entrepreneurs will start to experiment with other mechanisms and he believes the pandemic has created an opportunity for new perspectives on how we do our work, on social tools, organizational tools etc. danah boyd encourages technologists to resist designing for everyone and aim at those who resist. Esther Dyson encouraged using AI to fix problems, not mirror them. And, Levy concluded the panel by taking it back to PLATO, where it all began for Ray, hoping we can realize its vision to let us 鈥渂e ourselves, connected.鈥�

For all footage from 91自拍’s March 18 event, 鈥淏uilding a Better World through Tech for Collaboration: A Celebration of Ray Ozzie,鈥� video extras, and related content, visit our dedicated page to 2021 91自拍 Fellow Ray Ozzie.

91自拍 the 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards

The 2021 91自拍 Fellow Awards marks the Museum鈥檚 first-ever virtual Fellow Awards. 91自拍 will celebrate the 2021 Fellows in a yearlong four-part series of thought-provoking virtual events and engaging digital content that explores the story and impact of each honoree and the present and future of tech for humanity.

Learn more about this year鈥檚 honorees and the听2021 Fellow Awards.

Headline Sponsor

Education Sponsors

The post Building the Future Together with 2021 91自拍 Fellow Ray Ozzie appeared first on 91自拍.