The Cognitive Being as the User at Project Mac

This essay traces the evolution of time-sharing systems from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s to demonstrate how time-sharing systems reflect a larger epistemological shift in the history of human-computer interaction. By placing time-sharing systems within their sociohistorical context, this essay demonstrates that time-sharing was not only instrumental for the progress of interactive computing but was also instrumental for the development of concepts around the modern computer user. This article revolves around Project MAC, a large time-sharing project founded at MIT in 1963. Started through funding by computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider, Project MAC brought together various academics from across the university for the sole purpose of building a time-sharing system. Within this intellectually diverse community, researchers quickly found that by issuing each user a unique share, time-sharing afforded users the sensation of control. This observation influenced perceptions of the user within the group and ideas about “user frustration” and “user satisfaction” were circulated. Project MAC fostered interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, resulting in an exciting environment in which user experience was assessed with a genuine curiosity. In revisiting time-sharing and the work of Project MAC, a greater understanding for the term “user” is made clear.