Last month, Bob Taylor (the subject of a recent oral history) was recognized by The University of Texas. Bob received the Graduate School Outstanding Alumnus Award, a $100,000 Presidential Endowed Fellowship was established in his name, and he gave the first in a series of lectures in the UT Graduate School’s Centential celebration. Since this is also the 40th anniversary of the first tests of the ARPAnet, it was a fitting time for Bob’s achievements to be honored.
The lecture was in the form of an interview by New York Times technology reporter John Markoff, who noted:
The Internet has many fathers, but few deserve the label more than Robert W. Taylor.
Authors M. Mitchell Waldrop (The Dream Machine) and Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age) shared their views as well. J Strother Moore and Gary Chapman (who each worked with Bob in the past and now have UT positions) served as masters of ceremony.
The announcement for the lecture includes links to news stories about Bob, as well as the famous 1968 paper by Licklider and Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication Device“. The recap of the lecture includes links to a video and photographs.
Update 2024/05/08: Updated URLs via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine; the video and photographs appear to be lost.