Man-Computer Symbiosis-Post 2

When reading the Licklider article, Man-Computer Symbiosis, like some of the other students have said, I felt it was a bit dry considering it was written 50 years ago.  Once I got deeper into it, I realized that a lot of the information was ahead of its time and deserved to be acknowledged.  I was impressed with a lot of the things he had to say considering the time period when this was written.  Licklider was spot on when he states, "It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a "thinking center" that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and the symbiotic functions suggested earlier in this paper" (5.1).  Licklider was definitely ahead of his time making such predictions and having them turn out to be correct.  Modern day computers and having access to the internet is like having your own library with you at all times.  You can research anything you want and you will come across endless sources.

Another thing that stuck out to me in the article is when Licklider talked about memory and the cost of an item that possessed a substantial amount of memory.  He predicted such an item would cost "billions."  With the way that technology was back then, such a prediction made sense.  However, in today's world, electronics are affordable.  Smartphones, Smart-TVs, and computers all have incredible amounts of information and storage on them and they don't cost an arm and a leg.  I'm stunned by how far advances in technology have come over the last 50 years.  Steadily advancing and being able to build affordable equipment by using cost-efficient parts is amazing to me. 

Although this article is fairly outdated, it was very interesting to gain a perspective on such a topic from 50 years ago.  Licklider was way ahead of his time and this turned out to be an extremely interesting read.  In the 5 years since I graduated high school, regular flip-phones have turned into I-Phones, Smart-phones and I Pads.  It's impressive to watch this unfold before me, but one can only wonder how far we will go and what limits will be tested.