Pioneers of the online age

摘要

The historical development of online systems and services is not just a story of tapes and disks, terminals and telephones, search engines and algorithms, demonstrations and downtime; it is also a story of people. Examination of the published and unpublished documentation and transcripts of oral histories reveals a sense of a significant era and a vital, exciting time in the individual professional lives of the online pioneers. The leaders of the online age can be divided into three groups: the developers, the managers and trainers, and the users. The developers were diverse in their geographic and disciplinary backgrounds and their underlying goals, but they all were aggressive, competitive, and imaginative in creating opportunities to exploit the latest hardware and software of the period. The second group, managers and trainers, energetically demonstrated the unreliable online systems. With zeal, perseverance, charm, and even chicanery, they recruited and trained the first users. The users were the third group, playing a critical role in evaluating new systems, testing documentation, and assessing training programs.