On Oct 12, 2011, at 4:14 PM, Markus Pilman wrote:
> Without academics there wouldn't be computer science.
True, but to be fair, shouldn't we declare it a team effort? In the '50's,
computer science did not exist officially at the science-intensive institution
of MIT--academics in the math department warned people to stay away from
computers--most people considered the thought that computers themselves could
actually be a field of study to be ridiculous. The unofficial slogan of the
math department was, "There's no such thing as Computer Science--it's
witchcraft." Without Kotok, Gosper, Samson, Deutsch--non-academic
hackers--McCarthy would not have formed the first CS course at MIT. The hackers
weren't PhDs, but they shared motivations with the academics: To advance the
field in order to make contributions to humanity. I've been reading Steven
Levy's "Hackers"….
_______________________________________________
[email protected]
http://x-query.com/mailman/listinfo/talk
