| LOUIS T. BENEZET AWARD RECIPIENT 2008 |
 Dr. Terry Winograd '66
When Terry Winograd fell and broke his ankle this summer, he kept up with his correspondence on his wafer-thin Mac laptop. It was a practical application for a computer, a way to access technology comfortably in an unconventional position.
It was also a very simple illustration of the results of Terry’s life work as a computer science professor and computer innovator for the past forty years.
In the 1980s, Terry helped found Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, a group with a bumper sticker proclaiming “Technology is driving the future. The steering is up to us.” For decades, Terry has been finding ways to make technology work for people. It’s work he has loved since his first introduction to computers in the 1960s at Colorado College.
Terry went to high school in Greeley, Colorado, and chose to attend CC because he knew he wanted the experience of a small, liberal arts college. It didn’t disappoint him. He knew he wanted to study mathematics but computer science was in its infancy.
He was given a unique chance to learn about computers when he was a junior. “There was a doctor who became head of radiology at Penrose Hospital,” he says. “He had gotten a grant to use a computer for radiation treatment. He ended up in Colorado Springs with his computer and nobody who could do anything with it.”
The radiologist called CC and asked if there were any students with computer skills and Terry was recommended. “I went there and actually didn’t know how to program,” he admits. “The computer looked like a big Steelcase industrial desk with this eight-inch-high row of switches and lights on the top. I started off pushing all the switches and lights. I learned as I went along.”
After graduation, Terry won a Fulbright scholarship and headed to London to study linguistics. He then enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was an exciting time in his chosen profession, he says. The microprocessor was introduced in the early 1970s, just as Terry started his first academic job at Stanford University.
“MIT had computers that, for the first time, were powerful enough to do interesting things and they gave them to grad students to play with.”
He studied and taught artificial intelligence, eventually moving into human-computer interaction, a field he defines as, “Working on how you make the things computers do fit with the way people think.”
Larry Page, one the two founders of Google, was Terry’s Ph.D advisee. Our Benezet winner worked with Page on some of the early ideas for Google.
Alumni Awards Main Page |