Events
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
GTISC - CISTP Distinguished Lecture
Dr. Steve Lukasik
Rainbow's Beginning: The Difficult Birth of Networking
Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy, at Georgia Institute of Technology
Charles A. Smithgall Student Services Building
353 Ferst Drive, Auditorium – Room 117
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Refreshments will be served.
Abstract
How the Internet came to be, with its myriad applications and implications for the future, is a story usually told in triumphant terms. The Licklider vision; the fervor of his disciples; the dedication of computer scientists and electrical engineers; the sweat of a small number of graduate students; the faith of the Advanced Research Projects Agency seeking to avoid technological surprise; and the apparently unbounded attraction of the ARPANET to its early participants carries with it a sense of its inevitable success in the marketplace of computer users. But networking was not quite the "slam dunk" that now-discredited phrase might imply. The path to the eventual success of networking was strewn with obstacles that had to be overcome. In the interest of supplementing the technical history by illuminating the points of resistance, one can perhaps more fully appreciate the survival of the infant.
Dr. Lukasik received a B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His early research at Stevens Institute of Technology was on the physics of fluids and plasmas. While a member of the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), he was responsible for research in support of nuclear test ban negotiations and subsequently served from 1967–1974 as Deputy Director and Director of the Agency. Later government service was as Chief Scientist of the Federal Communications Commission, 1979–1982, where he was responsible for advising the Commission on technical issues in communication regulation and for the management of non-government use of the electromagnetic spectrum.
He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr Lukasik was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal in 1973 and 1974, and a D. Eng. (Hon.) from Stevens Institute of Technology. He is a founder of The Information Society: An International Journal, and has served on the Boards of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College and Stevens Institute of Technology.
He currently holds an appointment as Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy, at Georgia Institute of Technology.