Lessons from the History of Computing

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

“The Dream Machine” is one of my all-time favorite books. It tells the little known story of J.C.R. Licklider who was a psychologist, computer scientist, and key figure in the history of computing. “Lick” was a visionary; he painted the future of interactive computing in his “Man-Computer Symbiosis” manifesto, imagined the “intergalactic network,” a predecessor of the internet, and was one of the first ARPA directors. Lick didn’t do much inventing himself, instead he connected, influenced, and funded people who were working towards his vision and in doing so, he planted the seeds for some of the industry’s most influential projects such as the APARNet, XEROX parc, and Unix.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because the open source research-based collaborative environment from the second half of the 20th century is similar to what we’re seeing in crypto today; the main difference is that today’s projects are no longer funded by the government but by private investors.

So, if “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” (Mark Twain), what can we learn from J.C.R. Licklider’s story?

Here are a few of my takeaways:

• It’s all about human connections and trust: Lick built a strong community of smart people that trusted each other, which was fueled by personal connections and a sense of belonging. This enabled teams to work together and overcome hurdles despite being geographically dispersed (at a time when there was no internet).
• Facilitate cross pollination of talent and ideas: Lick organized conferences where researchers spent time together sharing their knowledge and identifying areas of collaboration. He also encouraged researchers to move across labs breaking down silos in the process.
• Allocate financial resources based on vision and keep the stakes low but don’t dismiss accountability: Lick carefully chose how to allocate his ARPA budget; he funded people and projects that aligned with his vision without expecting a specific outcome or setting a deadline, which left room for experimentation. Nevertheless he made teams accountable by using his capital as carrot & stick to push projects in one direction or another.

This may not be directly applicable to the Web 3.0 as the funding model has evolved since but it does provide guidance on how to think about community building and resource allocation.

From around the web

Decentralized funding? An analysis of three programs (Nadia Eghbal blog) — Looks at how open source projects spend their money and principles used in doing so. Long read, scroll to end for takeaways.

Not all governance is voting (Tony Sheng blog) — Explains why on-chain voting tools don’t equate to governance and therefore why the two should be decoupled when evaluating platforms.

Our Analysis of the MakerDAO (Reserve blog) — Excellent intro and comprehensive analysis of the MakerDAO stablecoin ecosystem conducted by Reserve, one of their competitors. Post concludes that although MakerDAO is the best solution today, its lack of scalability will make it hard to keep up with competitors.

Token-Curated Registries: Value Proposition and Challenges (Medium) by Qiao Wang from Messari — Reflections on token curated registries and how they compare to free centralized solutions.

What I Learned as a Design Intern at Coinbase (Medium) by Kathleen Hsu — Some simple but often forgotten principles when designing for real world applications in a technical, ambiguous, and ever changing space.

Smiley corner 😄

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Weekly newsletter published internally at Google. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.

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