The tale of three deeply different technologists

For someone of Steve Jobs' talent, energy, and charisma — and commensurate fame and fortune — to die at 56, stings us with a sense of injustice. Jobs turned technology into a fashion at a time when most people were intimidated by technology. His technology has to be touched, felt, worn, and flaunted. He had a deep sense of what people would want if only they knew what they wanted. Jobs had an even deeper understanding of that elusive alloy of science, art, and engineering (“taste”, as he often called it) that can fire the fancy of millions. In the i-world, Jobs so brilliantly conjured and controlled, everyone is supposed to either own or pine for his products.

A week after Job's death, Dennis Ritchie was found dead at his home in New Jersey. He was 70 and lived alone, ailing for quite some time. For all who earn their living by programming computers today, The C Programming Language most likely remains an enduring influence. The book, which Ritchie co-authored, teaches more than a programming language; it introduces a new way of thinking about computers. Ritchie's design of the C programming language, and co-development of the Unix operating system shaped much of computing as we know today.

Prophetic words

Ritchie's commented that they were not merely building computer programmes, but “a system around which fellowship can form”. These were prophetic words, given the subsequent burgeoning of the open source community and recent interests in social computing. Ritchie's own ideas, and ideas derived from them, lie at the heart of almost all the gizmos we hold in our hands today.

On October 24, 2011, John McCarthy died at Stanford, at the age of 84. McCarthy's body of work can not be enveloped by a product, or a company, or a programming language, or an operating system. A pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, he was also the father of foundational concepts in computing such as time-sharing, garbage collection, and possibilities of electronic commerce. Ideas such as garbage collection are now embedded within newer languages such as Java, and the sweep of McCarthy's influence on today's computing paradigms is phenomenal. Incidentally, Jobs was a regular at the Homebrew Computer Club, whose members McCarthy invited to his Stanford lab. The prototype of Apple 1 was first shared in the Homebrew fraternity.

Jobs, Ritchie, and McCarthy were technologists, but deeply different ones.

The adoption of a new technology in recent times goes through three distinct phases, typified by the ‘rainbow', ‘toy', and ‘light-bulb'. In the first phase the laity is “wowed” by the technology; but it still remains distant, like a rainbow in the sky. Then, if the drivers are right, the technology becomes a toy; masses have it in their hands, to be played with and gushed about. And then, if it is truly a game changer, the technology comes to be seen as a light-bulb. We press a switch and then, as if in Biblical epiphany, there is light. More than a century of perfecting the generation and transmission of electricity boils down to the flick of a finger that turns the light-bulb on. The technology becomes transparent. We take it for granted.

Level of transparency

In the long run, the level of transparency is one of the better tests of a technology's impact. Today, the technologies of McCarthy and Ritchie are closer to the light-bulb than Jobs'. If Jobs' had the additional decades McCarthy and Ritchie lived, maybe he would have been closer too.

The epitaphs of October 2011 are about what has been, and what might have been.

(The author is a practitioner, researcher and teacher in the computing disciplines.)