"to think as no human brain has ever thought"

The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today
- Man-Computer Symbiosis by J. C. R. Licklider (1960)

Ron Baecker describes here how his career was inspired by Lick's initial vision.

47 years on from Lick's original insight, it's sad that many people in education still don't get it. Alan Kay says there has been no innovation in computer science for many years ("... most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training"). I think we need to go back to when there was real innovation to rediscover the spirit of those times:

Licklider’s history suggests the influence of six interacting sources: Trained in psychology, math, and physics, Lick became an accomplished scientist and psychoacoustician. He interacted with and was in turn influenced by pioneering cognitive psychologists. He came under the influence of radical new ideas in cybernetics, information theory, and neuroscience being developed by amazing MIT mathematicians, scientists, and engineers ... In doing science, he was both experimenter and model builder, using analog computers and, by the 50s, digital computers to analyze data and build models. Today he would be described as a hacker
- Man-Computer Symbiosis by Ron Baecker