Word: heros
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Vannevar Bush is an unlikely cyberculture hero. After all, he was F.D.R.'s World War II science czar, organized the Manhattan Project and helped create the postwar military-industrial-university complex. But the onetime professor at M.I.T.--where he built a massive, gear-driven analog computer called the differential analyzer--was also a prophet. In 1945, dismayed by the wartime info overload, he proposed a desktop machine, the "memex," that would display text and pictures (from a microfilm library) at the press of a button. Presciently, Bush envisioned users of his proto-PC following trails of knowledge along storable hypertext...
Pneumonia, syphilis, gonorrhea, diphtheria, scarlet fever and many wound and childbirth infections that once killed indiscriminately suddenly became treatable. As deaths caused by bacterial infections plummeted, a grateful world needed a hero. Fleming alone became such an object of public adulation, probably for two reasons. First, Florey shunned the press, while Fleming seemed to revel in the publicity. Second, and perhaps more important, it was easier for the admiring public to comprehend the deductive insight of a single individual than the technical feats of a team of scientists...
...Reluctant Hero...
...SHUTTLE. When inclement weather strikes, the trip to the Yard usually involves a shuttle. With its colorful roster of professional chaeuffeurs, the shuttle ride offers free entertainment along with a ride. The Crazy Shuttle Driver, for example, has achieved a near cult-hero status among Quadlings, and his outrageous hijinx inevitably have commuters in stitches before their short ride ends. According to Currier resident Katherine F. Hart '01,"everybody knows about the Crazy Shuttle Driver...he yells a lot, pushes people...he just talks to everybody...
Story after story, friend to friend, in the bars, on the commuter trains--tales of a Homeric champion spun in the air like plates on sticks, so that they would not fall and smash, so that children might keep them alive ("You'll never forget that"). DiMaggio was both hero and celebrity, the distinction being that one does and the other is. The hero was the player; the celebrity dated show girls and eventually married Marilyn Monroe, effecting the merger of America's two favorite pastimes. The press protected him, and he protected himself by silence. Hank Greenberg observed that...