more timeline

1974-Augusto Boal (1931-present) Brazilian theatrical director, writer, and politician.
Interactive performance artist who used his interactive techniques to help the oppressed people of South America. These techniques are described in his 1974 book, "Theatre of the Oppressed." He is the only new media pioneer to have been jailed for practicing his art. In 1992 he ran for political office "as an act of theatre" and won, but was not reelected in 1996.

1975-Nicholas Negroponte (1943-present) American civil architect and computer scientist. He founded the Architecture Machine Group and the Media Lab at MIT and was one of the first architects to use computers and he was an innovator in the field of new media as a tool for architectural design. His "Soft Architecture Machines" describes methods developed by Negroponte and his collaborators at MIT.

1976-Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-present) German-born professor of computer science at MIT. His "Computer Power and Human Reason" is a result of his experiences with his AI program, ELIZA, which was the first to use natural language processing to interact with people. This experience led him to become one of the leading critics of artificial intelligence.

1977-Myron Krueger (1942-present) American new media artist. He was one of the first to research and work in the areas of "responsive environments" and "artificial reality" (i.e. virtual reality).

1977-Alan Kay (1940-present) and Adele Goldberg (1945-present). American computer scientists who co-wrote the essay "Personal Dynamic Media" which accurately predicted the future of the "notebook" or laptop computer.

1980-Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and Felix Guattari (1930-1992) were a French philosopher and psychoanalyst who co-wrote several works including "A thousand Plateaus"--for which they invented the genre/concept rhizomatic. Which as I understand it is a nonlinear form of writing or hypertext with a unique syntax.

1980-Seymour Papert (1928-present) South-African born MIT mathemetician, computer scientist and educator. In the 1960s he invented a philosphy of education which he called constructionism, and as the home computer became more common he began to see it as a powerful tool for learning. He invented the LOGO programming language which allowed children to control the computer and their own educational experience. His book, "Mindstorms" describes the role of the computer in constructionist education.

1980-Richard A. Bolt (?) American computer scientist. He was a member of Negroponte's Architecture Machine group at MIT. He designed the "Put-That-There" interface which was the first "multimodal" interface--it used speech and gesture input, as opposed to just typing.