Harry C. Forsdick – 50th Reunion Essay

Harry C. Forsdick

46 Burlington St.

Lexington, Massachusetts 2420

harry@forsdick.com

781-799-6002

Spouse(s): Marsha Baker, 1977 – now

Child(ren): Benjamin 1981 and William 1984

Education: Yale College BS, 1969; MIT MS 1973

Career: Internet Research, Bolt Beranek and Newman 23 years, 8 years in .COM hyperbole and aftermath.

Avocations: Travel, Art, Photography, Internet, Computers

College: Pierson

Enough, Basta, Dayenu. This may not be perfect, but it’s overdue. Story of my life.

Just in case I missed something, please check http://forsdick.com/yale-essay.html.

Upfront, my principles:

1. I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.

2. There but for the grace of God go you and I.

3. The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

Now for the stuff that comes easy to me.

I recently accepted the task of finding all articles in Wikipedia about people in our class. One thing Wikipedia has become is a crowd-sourced Who’s Who—all places, all times. I came away with the impression that people are in Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, not all of them consistent, fair or democratic. Which led me to ask, “Why shouldn’t I be there also?”

There were lots of good answers to this question, almost all coming from my self-image as a small fish in a big pond. For my entire life I have been a proud introvert, thank you very much. I always felt that a person ought to be judged more by their actions than their words. Now that I’m older, I can see that this engineering, just-the-facts approach to life has its limits.

I went to grad school at MIT in computer science and then joined the company (Bolt, Beranek, and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts) that built the ARPANET and later contributed significantly to the development of the Internet. Cambridge was ground zero for the Internet age and I was fortunate to be asked to dream up and demonstrate uses for this transformational communication mechanism. I got to think about and build many of the first or early illustrations of what you can do with the Internet. Topics such as cloud computing (in 1977), multimedia documents (1982), multimedia conferencing (1988), Internet-based video conferencing (1992), and the Personal Internet Newspaper (1995) led me directly into the dot-com era in 1996.

My research in Internet applications, establishing my set of work accomplishments, helped me feel more confident about myself, but still I noticed that others were far ahead of me in fame and wealth—but usually not in accomplishments and happiness. I was still a small talented fish in a big pond of talented people.

In 1977 I married the attractive, lovable and feisty Marsha Baker, who I met while I was a graduate student at MIT. Marsha gave birth to our two boys in 1981 and 1984: Ben and Will. They both still live in the Boston area, so we see them often. Ben is an attorney and Will works for the Boston Red Sox.

In my 40s, I began to realize that “if you just build it, they probably won’t come,” unless you tell them about it in words they can understand. So I added to my Internet research skills, learning how to explain the Internet in simple terms to the rest of the world.

When I retired in 2004, I decided to turn my talents to help, teach and assist my friends and neighbors in the topics I researched in my business career. Suddenly I was a big fish in a little pond. Since retiring Marsha and I have explored our many interests fueled by Marsha’s interest in history and my interests in photography, computers and the Internet. We do this through volunteering, reading, drawing, traveling within the US and abroad, and writing, photographing and publishing travelogs about our trips on the Internet.

These days, I don’t care as much about what sized fish I am, or which pond I’m in. Ah, the wisdom of age.