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Web guru's vision of an educated India

Michael Dertouzos, progenitor of the World Wide Web who died in a Boston hospital on Tuesday, had predicted that just 50 million Indians could add $1 trillion to India's gross domestic product by 2010.

"Thirty-to-fifty million Indians can read and write English," the computer guru had said in a lecture in New Delhi last year, and forecast that these people alone could take India's GDP up by $1 trillion within the next 10 years.

"The beauty of the scheme is that it can be achieved without any fresh training or education," said Dertouzos, who was a celebrated director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's laboratory for computer science.

His memorable address, organised by an apex industry chamber, surprised many who thought Dertouzos was yet another Ivy League techie with ready-made prescriptions for India's future prosperity.

A best-selling author of eight books, he said India as an ancient civilisation had to take its own decisions on how best to cope with changes.

The 64-year-old soft-spoken computer guru -- who had a rare gift for putting complicated technology within the reach of non-technical audiences -- had joined MIT in 1964 and became director of its LCS in 1974.

Under him, the laboratory became one of the largest research establishments at MIT with 400 faculty members, graduate students and research staff.

Several of his students were Indians who had graduated from the various Indian Institutes of Technology and come to the US for further studies.

Dertouzos ensured that the LCS dedicated itself to the invention, development and understanding of information technologies, always within the context of their human utility.

"We made a big mistake 300 years ago when we separated technology and humanism," he had said in an interview with Scientific American. "It's time to put the two back together."

Dertouzos was raised in Athens and his father was an admiral in the Greek Navy. An experience that deeply affected him for the rest of his life was his earliest memories of war-torn Athens and of people starving in the streets.

He had dreamt of studying at MIT, but went on to secure his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Arkansas, where he had won a Fulbright scholarship.

Later, his dream did fructify when he applied for a doctorate programme at MIT in 1960 after selling soft drinks for a few years. Upon receiving his PhD in electrical engineering there in 1964, he joined the faculty as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 1973.

According to Tim Berners-Lee, considered the inventor of the World Wide Web, Dertouzos was instrumental in forming a consortium that elevated the Web beyond the confines of government or business control.

"At that point, I had a half-formed crazy idea. He played an absolutely key role," Berners-Lee said, referring to his close friend's role in forming the consortium. "Only someone with this stature could have pulled it off."

"Michael was larger than life. He was at once a leader, builder, visionary and caring human being," said Charles M Vest, president of MIT.

Dertouzos, who was an avid sailor, spent much of the past 25 years studying and predicting the shifts that technology would take in future.

As early as in 1976, when personal computers had barely entered the scene, he predicted that by the mid-1990s there would be a PC in every three-four homes.

Indo-Asian News Service

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