31 DEC 2011

On the shoulders of...

Here's to the giants of the digital age we lost this year - the inventors, scientists, & entrepreneurs. The list is by no means exclusive; it's just off the top of my head.

Paul Baran (1926-2011), one of the architects of the Internet.

John McCarthy (1927-2011), inventor of Lisp, one of the key figures of Artificial Intelligence research.

Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011), creator of the C programming language, co-creator of Unix.

Steven Paul Jobs (1955-2011), founder of Apple, inventor of the Macintosh, the iPhone, and the iPad.

They helped define the sandbox in which we get to play. And they thought thoughts that have a gotten a life of their own - powerful ideas that we find ourselves re-thinking, validating, and building on.