Legendary Computer Hacker to Speak at UMaine
Contact: George Markowsky, (207) 581-3940; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777
Computer hacking isn’t always a bad thing, despite what typically comes to mind when you hear the term. Historically, in some technical communities, a hack was an especially elegant solution to a problem. Hence a hacker was someone who could write beautifully elegant code to solve problems.
Richard Greenblatt is one of the most highly regarded hackers of all time and has been contributing significant and elegant programs since the 1960’s when he first entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a student. He is scheduled to give a presentation at the University of Maine at 2:10 p.m. Monday, April 27, in room 107 of Donald P. Corbett Hall as part of the Computer Science Department’s Seminar Series.
His lecture, “Artificial Intelligence and LISP: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” will be a relatively non-technical presentation about progress in artificial intelligence.
Hacking was especially important in the early days of computing because of the very limited capabilities of early computers. Unfortunately, the term hacker has come to mean someone who engages in criminal activity, but this is not the original meaning of the word.
Greenblatt is described as a “hacker’s hacker” and is noted for his programming expertise as described in Steven Levy’s book, “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.”
He was the main implementer of Maclisp on the PDP-6. He wrote “MacHack” in response to the claim by skeptic Hubert Dreyfus that computers would not be able to play chess. Dreyfus was beaten by the program, marking the beginning of computer chess. He also wrote The Incompatible Timesharing System with Tom Knight and Stewart Nelson. The timesharing operating system was highly influential and was used at MIT.
Later, Greenblatt was the main designer of the MIT Lisp machine along with Tom Knight. He founded Lisp Machines, Inc. according to his vision of an ideal hacker-friendly computer company.
Greenblatt’s presentation is free and open to the public. For directions to campus, visit www.umaine.edu.