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From: v...@eff.org (Gerard Van der Leun)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: EFF Announces Pioneer Award Winners
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Date: 16 Mar 92 23:19:58 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 235, Message 1 of 10
ENGELBART, KAHN, WARREN, JENNINGS AND SMERECZYNSKI
NAMED AS FIRST WINNERS OF THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION'S PIONEER
AWARDS
Cambridge, March 16,1992
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced the five
winners of the first annual EFF Pioneer Awards for substantial
contributions to the field of computer based communications. The
winners are: Douglas C. Engelbart of Fremont, California; Robert Kahn
of Reston, Virginia; Jim Warren of Woodside, California; Tom Jennings
of San Francisco, California; and Andrzej Smereczynski of Warsaw,
Poland.
The winners will be presented with their awards at a ceremony open to
the public this Thursday, March 19, at L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in
Washington, DC, beginning at 5:15 PM. Most winners are expected to be
present to accept the awards in person. The ceremony is part of this
week's Second Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy that is
taking place at L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in D.C.
Mitchell Kapor, President of the EFF, said today that: "We've created
the Pioneer Awards in order to recognize and honor individuals who
have made ground-breaking contributions to the technology and culture
of digital networks and communities."
Nominations for the Pioneer Awards were carried out over national and
international computer-communication systems from November, 1991 to
February 1992. Several hundred nominations were received by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the final winners were selected by
a panel of six judges.
The criteria for the Pioneer Awards was that the person or
organization nominated had to have made a substantial contribution to
the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based
communications.
The Pioneer Winners
Douglas Engelbart is one of the original moving forces in the personal
computer revolution who is responsible for many ubiquitous features of
today's computers such as the mouse, the technique of windowing,
display editing, hypermedia, groupware and many other inventions and
innovations. He holds more than 20 patents and is widely-recognized in
his field as one of our era's true visionaries.
Robert Kahn was an early advocate and prime mover in the creation of
ARPANET which was the precursor of today's Internet. Since the late
60's and early 70's Mr. Kahn has constantly promoted and tirelessly
pursued innovation and heightened connectivity in the world's computer
networks.
Tom Jennings started the Fidonet international network. Today it is a
linked network of amateur electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs)
with more than 10,000 nodes worldwide and it is still growing. He
contributed to the technical backbone of this system by writing the
FIDO BBS program as well as to the culture of the net by pushing for
development and expansion since the early days of BBSing. He is
currently editor of FidoNews, the network's electronic newsletter.
Jim Warren has been active in electronic networking for many years.
Most recently he has organized the First Computers, Freedom and
Privacy Conference, set-up the first online public dialogue link with
the California legislature, and has been instrumental is assuring that
rights common to older mediums and technologies are extended to
computer networking.
Andrzej Smereczynski is the Administrator of the PLEARN node of the
Internet and responsible for the extension of the Internet into Poland
and other east European countries. He is the person directly
responsible for setting up the first connection to the West in post-
Communist Middle Europe. A network "guru", Mr. Smereczynski has
worked selflessly and tirelessly to extend the technology of
networking as well as its implicit freedoms to Poland and neighboring
countries.
This year's judges for the Pioneer Awards were: Dave Farber of the
University of Pennsylvania Computer Science Department; Howard
Rheingold, editor of The Whole Earth Review; Vint Cerf, head of CNRI;
Professor Dorothy Denning Chair of George Washington University's
Computer Science Department; Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0,
Steve Cisler of Apple Computer, and John Gilmore of Cygnus Support.
For more information contact:
Gerard Van der Leun
Director of Communications
Electronic Frontier Foundation
155 Second Street Cambridge, MA 02141
(617) 864-0665 Internet: v...@eff.org