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59 Anatol Holt

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Anatol Holt began as a UNIVAC I programmer under John W. Mauchly, in 1952. Together with the late William J. Turanski he developed a programming environment for the UNIVAC family called "Generalized Programming" - a very early example of CSCW. From 1963 to 1974, Holt was Principal Investigator under ARPA's IPTO sponsored research called the "Information Systems Theory Project". During this time Holt cooperated with CarlAdam Petri, (GMD, Bonn, Germany), in the development of Petri nets.

Since 1974 Holt has been active in various industrial and university settings. In 1979, together with Paul Cashman, Holt launched the world's first "coordination program" on the ARPA net (Monitor Software Trouble Reports). Some years later, Holt and venture capitalist Eli Jacobs, founded "Coordination Technology, Inc." for the development of a new system software platform to support distributed electronic work environments.

In the last 6 years, Holt has lived and worked in Milano, Italy, where (among other things) he has been active at the University of Milano. In 4 of these years, he authored a book titled Organized Activity and Its Support by Computer, recently produced by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Holt holds an Ms in mathematics from MIT, and a PhD in descriptive linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Holt was brought up by Mead and Bateson within their intellectual environment. He describes himself as being of a different mind to Bateson in an interview - "as adults we mostly disagreed -- he being much more "cybernetically" and "system" impressed and inclined than me."

"GB "saw a light" which, he thought, was intellectually/historically new and important. He identified this with "cybernetics" (the George Macy Foundation), "systems theory" and new approaches to "information". While these seem like "formidable" subjects he thought they held out new promise to the "common man" (someone he also wanted to be). His father was a biologist/evolutionary-theorist; MM was an anthropologist; later in his life he worked with dolphins and with mental patients; in the light of his "new light", I don't think, in his own mind, he ever switched from one thing to another; cybernetics, systems theory, "information theory" were, in his mind, gropings towards the commonality which made all of these "areas" one-and-the-same.

As to me: I too think the "new light" is real and really needed. The over-arching commonality between all of these ever-so-different-seeming subjects is also exhibited in the application of computer technology in ever-so-different-seeming domains (as also mathematics). Like GB, I too am fascinated by the "information" theme -- but, in my case (in contrast to GB) not a little because computers are so information oriented".

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References:

  • Holt, Anatol W. (1958) Holt, Anatol W. "General purpose programming systems"  E A DOI Extract: Generic programming systems
          in [ACM] (1958) [ACM] CACM 1(05) (May 1958)  E
  • Holt, A. W.; Turanski, W. J.; and McGinnity, D. L. (1959) Holt, A. W.; Turanski, W. J.; and McGinnity, D. L. "Common programming language task, II. Automatic code translation system (ACT.)" Univ. of Pennsylvania, Report No. AD60URI, 1959  E A
          in [ACM] (1958) [ACM] CACM 1(05) (May 1958)  E
  • Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. Final Report of Co (1959) Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. Final Report of Common Programming Language Task, Part II, "Automatic Code Translation System", USASRDL, Fort Monmouth, N.J., Report no. AD59UR1, July 31, 1959;  E A
          in [ACM] (1958) [ACM] CACM 1(05) (May 1958)  E
  • Holt, A. (1960) Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. First Quarterly Report of Common Programming Language Task, Part II, January 15, 1960;  E A
          in [ACM] (1958) [ACM] CACM 1(05) (May 1958)  E
  • Holt, A. (1960) Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. Second Quarterly Report of Common Programming Language Task, Part II, March 15, 1960  E A
          in [ACM] (1958) [ACM] CACM 1(05) (May 1958)  E
  • Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. (1960) Holt, A. W. and Turanski, W. J. "Man-to-Machine Communication and Automatic Code Translation"  E A Extract: General Considerations Extract: FIELDATA Requirements Extract: Code-to-Code Translation Extract: The ACT System Extract: Allocation Interpreter Extract: The Core Library Extract: The General Translation Library Extract: Final Summary
          in [JCC 17] (1960) [JCC 17] Proceedings of the 1960 Western Joint Computer Conference, May 1960  E
  • Holt, A. W.; Turanski, W. J. (1960) Holt, A. W.; Turanski, W. J. "Automatic Code Translation System," final report, Document No. AD6OURI, Contract No. DA-36-039-sc-75047.  E A
          in [JCC 17] (1960) [JCC 17] Proceedings of the 1960 Western Joint Computer Conference, May 1960  E
  • Holt, Anatol W. (1961) Holt, Anatol W. "Program organization and record keeping for dynamic storage allocation"  E A
          in [ACM] CACM 4(10) (October 1961) (1961) [ACM] CACM 4(10) (October 1961) "Proceedings of a Symposium on Storage Allocation"  E
  • (1961) Holt, Anatol review of Thuring 1960  E A
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E
  • Holt, A.W., Changon, S. (1965) Holt, A.W., Changon, S. O., Shapiro, R. M., and Warshall, S. 1965. Information System Theory Project, Vol. 1, Document AD 629-819 (National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Va.).  E A
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E
  • Holt, A.W. (1965) Holt, A.W. Mem-theory, a mathematical method for the description and analysis of discrete finite information systems, Applied Data Research, Inc., 1965  E A
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E
  • Holt, A.W. (1968) Holt, A.W. INFORMATION SYSTEM THEORY PROJECT, FINAL REPORT. Applied Data Research, Inc. (Princeton, New Jersey) report no. ADR-Ref-6606, USAF Rome Air Development Center report no. RADC-TR-68-305, CFSTI report no. AD-676 972, 359 pages. 1968 September.  E A
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E
  • Holt, A. W. and Commoner, F. 1970. (1970) Holt, A. W. and Commoner, F. 1970. "Events and Conditions". Technical Report (Massachusetts Computer Associates, Inc., Wakefield, Ma.).  E A
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E
  • Holt, Anatol W. (1988) Holt, Anatol W. "Diplans: a new language for the study and implementation of coordination" ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 6(2) April 1988 pp109-125  E A Extract: Introduction Extract: DIPLAN Semantics Extract: The Diplan Graphical Language Extract: A Preliminary Example
          in (1961) ACM Computing Reviews 2(02) March-April 1961  E