As Stu Card remembers it, “There was this thread of ideas that led from Vannevar Bush through J. C. R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and Alan Kay–a thread in the Ascent of Man. It was like the Holy Grail. We would rationalize our mission according to what Xerox needed, and so on. But whenever we could phrase an idea so that it fell on t…

ascent.dot

digraph {
    "Vannevar Bush" -> "Claude Shannon";
    
    "Claude Shannon" -> "Ivan Sutherland";
    
    subgraph ailab {
        rank = same;
        edge[dir=none];
        
        "Seymour Papert" -> "Marvin Minsky";
        "Marvin Minsky" -> "John McCarthy";
    }
    "Jean Piaget" -> "Seymour Papert";

    "Marvin Minsky" -> "Gerald Jay Sussman";
    "Seymour Papert" -> "Gerald Jay Sussman";

    subgraph mitgen2 {
        rank = same;
        edge[dir=none];
        
        "Gerald Jay Sussman" -> "Hal Abelson";
    }

    "Hal Abelson" -> "Mitchel Resnick";

    "Vannevar Bush" -> "Douglas Engelbart" [style=dashed];

    "Douglas Engelbart" -> "Alan Kay" [style=dashed];
    "Seymour Papert" -> "Alan Kay";
    "Ivan Sutherland" -> "Alan Kay";

    "Edward Tufte" -> "Bret Victor" [style = dashed];
    "Seymour Papert" -> "Bret Victor" [style = dashed];
    "Alan Kay" -> "Bret Victor" [style = dashed];
}