Abstract
The paper will discuss two major themes. A new field, is often initially championed by a small set of visionaries. There are many individuals who qualify as HCI visionaries. I will mention the impact of only three, Vannevar Bush, J.C.R. Licklider, and Douglas Englebart. Second, while considerable progress has been made in understanding what makes computers hard to use and in developing methodologies that support making them easier to use, the pace of technological change has been so rapid that just when we think we have a handle on it, the technology changes and we have a new set of problems. I will touch on several eras: the batch processing era, the time-sharing era, the personal computer era, the internet era, and the handheld-wireless era that is merging into the ubiquitous computing era.
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