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Let's Raise A Glass To The Many Tech Pioneers Who Died In 2016 (slashdot.org)
In technology, you're always "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before you -- and together, each individual's contribution becomes part of a larger ongoing story. So as this year finally winds to a close, click through to see our list of some of the pioneers who left us in 2016. And feel free to share any memories and reflections of your own in the comments.
- David Balme, the lieutenant-commander in Britain's royal Navy during World War II who captured one of the Nazi's Enigma encryption device
- Jane Fawcett, one of the British codebreakers who deciphered a crucial Enigma-encoded message
- Erich Bloch, who helped develop the first IBM mainframe
- Intel CEO (and first hire) Andy Grove
- Ray Tomlinson, considered the inventor of email
- John Ellenby, "godfather of the modern laptop"
- Bill Campbell, the legendary tech executive who passed along his advice to Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Larry Page, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos
- John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the earth
- Joe Sutter, the lead designer on the 747
- Bob Ebeling, one of five engineers who'd forewarned NASA that the Challenger Space Shuttle could explode at liftoff.
- Vera Rubin, the astronomer who helped confirm the existence of dark matter.
- The 'Radioactive Boy Scout', the ambitious teenager whose efforts to build a breeder reactor turned his parents' home in Michigan into an EPA superfund cleanup site.
- Sound designer Jory K. Prum, who worked on more than 120 video games
- David Bunnell, said to have founded more computer magazines than anyone (including PC Magazine and Macworld)
*quack* *quack* *quack*
I don't live in the past.
Slashdot, stop living in the past. Get CowboyNeal off your polls. It's embarrassing and sad, stop trying to remind us about when the site was good.
Surely Marvin Minsky should be present on this list.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Fictional characters will always be more memorable than real life people. Especially these no name tech people.
In ten years, you'll likely forget all these names, but you'll never forget Princess Leia.
Might as well be dead.
Also you should add Jay Forrester (inventor of core memory, among other things) and Bob Fano (founder of the MIT computer science lab).
I for one, will honour and drink for all of them. And Prince, he wasn't really tech, but he was Tech-no. And duh, Carrie Fisher you insensitive clod!
you're always "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before you
This is not always true in technology.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders."
-- Hal Abelson, computer science professor.
He was a PHB. He didn't pioneer anything.
>but you'll never forget Princess Leia.
Because Disney won't let you.
And here mom.
Or have I been misled by the liberal press ?
I thought all tech pioneers, past and present, were women ?!
2016 seems like a year where far too many awesome people died, but it's just the baby boomer curve.
2017 will be much worse.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A true hero and defender of technology. We need more people like him in the high courts.
Seymour Papert father of logo
Steve Ocko - two thirds of the team at the Media Lab who along with Mitch Resnick provided the leadership that kept new cool things in front of kids and let them express creativity in tech in ays that were engaging and fun. The three of them once presented via satellite from our place to kids who said hi then quickly wanted to speak to the kids on set building the whatever out of legos and code. They realized that the kids knew where the real action was.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
>but you'll never forget Princess Leia.
Because Disney won't let you.
So not all Disney princesses have to spend 20 years in the Vault?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I asked for ducks, not dieting or investment advice.
now trump have been U.S president, What shoud we do? regard,royalqq
APK didn't make the list. Oh, well - maybe next year?
From Wikipedia:
David Lewis Needle (1947 – February 20, 2016) was a key engineer and co-chief architect in the creation of the Amiga 1000 computer with Jay Miner, Dave Morse, and RJ Mical. He was one of the main designers and developers of the custom chips of the Amiga computer. Later he co-invented the Atari Lynx and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer with Dave Morse and RJ Mical.
A 1995 article in Next Generation commented "It's true that of the machines that Mical and Needle have created, only the Amiga has been a true global mass market hit ... But it's only fair to put forward the argument that this is down to the marketing of the machines rather than the quality of the product."
Dave Needle died on February 20, 2016.
They should add, "and the idiots at Slashdot forgot about him."
Media loves it's death cult stuff and the people sadly wallow in it's energy.
Let us honour the living, like the inventor of Tek, William Shatner, and the creator of TeX, Dohald Knuth.
Ray Tomlinson the real inventor of email passed away in 2016.
You should include Seymour Papert, co-inventor of the Logo programming language and education theorist, early AI researcher, and mensch. He will be missed.
The massive amount of shitposting this article got.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...