Google, on Monday, honoured Michael Dertouzos, the man who foresaw the impact of the Internet and the use of the personal computer, with a doodle.
Dertouzos, a Greek scientist, joined and headed the MIT Laboratory for Computer Sciences (LCS), which oversaw the birth of the Internet as we know it today, as well as spreadsheets, the NuBus and the X Window System.
“Dertouzos worked to make LCS the North American home of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an alliance of companies promoting the Web's evolution and interconnectivity. Dertouzos recruited Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, to run it,” said a statement on Google’s doodle blog.
In 1980, Dertouzos wrote about ‘The Information Marketplace’ — a concept he explained in his book What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives .
“If we strip the hype away,” he had observed in his book, “a simple, crisp and inevitable picture emerges — of an Information Marketplace where people and their computers will buy, sell and freely exchange information and information work.”
The doodle places Dertouzos at the centre, facing away from a blackboard, surrounded by the things he helped bring to the world — RSA encryption, the World Wide Web Consortium, the spreadsheet and NuBus.
