Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

Dertouzos, Michael L. 141While the term demon originated in the UNIX culture,similar facilities exist in many operating systems. Even inthe relatively primitive MS-DOS for IBM personal computersof the 1980s, the ability to load and retain small utilityprograms that could share the main memory with the currentlyrunning application allowed for a sort of demon thatcould spool output or await a special keypress. MicrosoftWindows systems have many demon-like operating systemcomponents that can be glimpsed by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination.The sense of autonomy implied in the term demon is insome ways similar to that found in bots or software agentsthat can automatically retrieve information on the Internet,or in the Web crawler, which relentlessly pursues, records,and indexes Web links for search engines. (See softwareagent and search engine.)Further ReadingBrock, Dean, and Bob Benites. Mastering Tools, Taming Daemons:UNIX for the Wizard Apprentice. Greenwich, Conn.: ManningPublications, 1995.Stevens, W. Richard. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment.Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Addison-Wesley, 2005.“UNIX Daemons in Perl.” Available online. URL: http://www.webreference.com/perl/tutorial/9/. Accessed July 8, 2007.Dertouzos, Michael L.(1936–2001)Greek-AmericanComputer Scientist, FuturistBorn in Athens, Greece, on November 5, 1936, MichaelDertouzos spent adventurous boyhood years accompanyinghis father (an admiral) in the Greek navy’s destroyersand submarines. He became interested in Morse Code,shipboard machinery, and mathematics. At the age of 16he read an article about Claude Shannon’s work in informationtheory and a project at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology that sought to build a mechanical robot“mouse.” He quickly decided that he wanted to come toAmerica to study at MIT.After the hardships of the World War II years intervened,Dertouzos received a Fulbright scholarship thatplaced him in the University of Arkansas, where he earnedhis bachelor’s and master’s degrees while working on acoustic-mechanicaldevices for the Baldwin Piano Company. Hewas then able to fulfill his boyhood dream by receiving hisPh.D. from MIT, then promptly joined the faculty. He wasdirector of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS)starting in 1974. The lab has been a hotbed of new ideasin computing, including computer time-sharing, Ethernetnetworking, and public-key cryptography. Dertouzos alsoembraced the growing Internet and serves as coordinator ofthe World Wide Web consortium, a group that seeks to createstandards and plans for the growth of the network.Combining theoretical interest with an entrepreneur’seye on market trends, Dertouzos started a small companycalled Computek in 1968. It made some of the first “smartterminals” that included their own processors.In the 1980s, Dertouzos began to explore the relationshipbetween developments and infrastructure ininformation processing and the emerging “informationmarketplace.” However, the spectacular growth of theinformation industry has taken place against a backdrop ofthe decline of American manufacturing. Dertouzos’s 1989book, Made In America, suggested ways to revitalize Americanindustry.During the 1990s, Dertouzos brought MIT into closerrelationship with the visionary designers who were creatingand expanding the World Wide Web. When Tim Berners-Lee and other Web pioneers were struggling to create theWorld Wide Web consortium to guide the future of the newtechnology, Dertouzos provided extensive guidance to helpthem set their agenda and structure. (See World WideWeb and Berners-Lee, Tim.)Dertouzos was dissatisfied with operating systems suchas Microsoft Windows and with popular applications programs.He believed that their designers made it unnecessarilydifficult for users to perform tasks, and spent moretime on adding fancy features than on improving the basicusability of their products. In 1999, Dertouzos and the MITLCS announced a new project called Oxygen. Working incollaboration with the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,Oxygen was intended to make computers “as natural apart of our environment as the air we breathe.”As a futurist, Dertouzos tried to paint vivid pictures ofpossible future uses of computers in order to engage thegeneral public in thinking about the potential of emergingtechnologies. His 1995 book, What Will Be, paints a vividportrait of a near-future pervasively digital environment.His imaginative future is based on actual MIT research,such as the design of a “body net,” a kind of wearablecomputer and sensor system that would allow people tonot only keep in touch with information but also to communicatedetailed information with other people similarlyequipped. This digital world will also include “smartrooms” and a variety of robot assistants, particularly in thearea of health care. However, this and his 2001 publication,The Unfinished Revolution, are not unalloyed celebrationsof technological wizardry. Dertouzos has pointed outthat there is a disconnect between technological visionarieswho lack understanding of the daily realities of mostpeoples’ lives, and humanists who do not understand theintricate interconnectedness (and thus social impact) ofnew technologies.Dertouzos was given an IEEE Fellowship and awardedmembership in the National Academy of Engineering, Hedied on August 27, 2001, after a long bout with heart disease.He was buried in Athens near the finish line for theOlympic marathon.Further ReadingDertouzos, Michael. L. The Unfinished Revolution: How to MakeTechnology Work for Us—Instead of the Other Way Around.New York: HarperCollins, 2002.———. What Will Be: How the New World of Information WillChange Our Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.“Farewell to a Visionary of the Computer Age.” Business Week,September 17, 2001, p. 101.