Alan Kotok
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Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 – May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
(Digital, or DEC) and at the
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...
(W3C).
Steven Levy Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for ''Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book ...
, in his book '' Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution'', describes Kotok and his classmates at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT) as the first true
hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
s. Kotok was a precocious child who skipped two grades before college. At MIT, he became a member of the
Tech Model Railroad Club The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America. Formed in 1946, its HO sc ...
, and after enrolling in MIT's first freshman programming class, he helped develop some of the earliest
computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
including a digital audio program and what is sometimes called the first
video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
('' Spacewar!''). Together with his teacher John McCarthy and other classmates, he was part of the team that wrote the Kotok-McCarthy program which took part in the first chess match between computers. After leaving MIT, Kotok joined the computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), where he worked for over 30 years. He was the chief architect of the
PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, espec ...
family of computers, and created the company's Internet Business Group, responsible for several forms of Web-based technology including the first popular search engine. Kotok is known for his contributions to the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and to the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
through his work at the World Wide Web Consortium, which he and Digital had helped to found, and where he served as associate chairman.


Personal life

Alan Kotok was born in
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, and was raised as an only child in Vineland, New Jersey. During his childhood, he played with tools in his father's hardware store and learned
model railroading Railway modelling (UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) or model railroading (US and Canada) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale. The scale models include locomotives, rolling stock, streetcars, t ...
. He was a precocious child, skipping two grades at high school, and he matriculated at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT) at the age of 16 in the fall of 1958. Although his interest in computers began at
Vineland High School Vineland High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school located in Vineland, in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in ninth through twelfth grades as part of the Vineland Public Schools. The now reunifi ...
, his first practical experience of computing came at MIT; there he developed a habit of working late at night when more computer time was available. In 1977, at age 36, Kotok married Judith McCoy, a choir director and piano teacher on the faculty of the
Longy School of Music Longy School of Music of Bard College is a private music school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1915 as the Longy School of Music, it was one of the four independent degree-granting music schools in the Boston region along with the New En ...
. They lived in
Harvard, Massachusetts Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 25 miles west-northwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several ...
,
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
and
Cape May, New Jersey Cape May is a city located at the southern tip of Cape May Peninsula in Cape May County, New Jersey, United States, where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the country's oldest vacation resort destinations, and part of ...
. The couple shared a love of 16th and 17th-century music and pipe organs, and toured historic pipe organs in Sweden, Germany, Italy and Mexico. They had a daughter, Leah Kotok, and two stepchildren from Judith's prior marriage, Frederica and Daryl Beck. Kotok recorded an oral history at the Computer History Museum in 2004. He died at his home in Cambridge, apparently from a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...
, on May 26, 2006, seven months after the death of his wife during her treatment for cancer. He is survived by two daughters, a son, and two grandsons.


MIT: 1958–62

At MIT, Kotok earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. He was influenced by teachers such as
Jack Dennis Jack Bonnell Dennis (born October 13, 1931) is a computer scientist and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The work of Dennis in computer systems and computer languages is recogniz ...
and John McCarthy and by his involvement in the student-organized
Tech Model Railroad Club The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America. Formed in 1946, its HO sc ...
(TMRC), which he joined soon after starting college in 1958. While a graduate student and member of TMRC, Dennis introduced his students to the
TX-0 The TX-0, for ''Transistorized Experimental computer zero'', but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64 K of 18-bit words of magnetic-core memory. Constru ...
on loan to MIT indefinitely from
Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and de ...
. In the spring of 1959, McCarthy taught the first course in programming that MIT offered to freshmen. and Outside classes, Kotok, David Gross,
Peter Samson Peter R. Samson (born 1941 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts) is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software for the TX-0 and PDP-1. Samson studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 195 ...
, Robert A. Saunders and Robert A. Wagner, all friends from TMRC, reserved time on the TX-0. Kotok begins at 0:53:50. They were able to use the TX-0 as a personal,
single-user Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leavin ...
tool rather than a
batch processing Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...
system, thanks to Dennis, faculty advisors and John McKenzie, the operations manager. In September 1961, Digital donated a
PDP-1 The PDP-1 (''Programmed Data Processor-1'') is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at Massachusett ...
to MIT. Although not an expensive machine, and with a tiny (by today's standards) 9K of memory, it had a Type 30 precision CRT display. Dennis oversaw the PDP-1 lab, located next door to the TX-0. Students from TMRC worked as support staff, programming the new computer.


Chess

With classmates
Elwyn Berlekamp Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.Contributors, ''IEEE Transactions on Information Theory'' 42, #3 (May 1996), p. 1048. DO10. ...
, Michael Lieberman, Charles Niessen and Wagner, Kotok began to develop McCarthy's IBM 704 chess-playing program in 1959. Kotok described their work in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project Memo 41. The Kotok-McCarthy chess program at MIT would also become Kotok's S.B. thesis. "The chess group" graduated in 1962 and at that point their program was able to play chess "comparable to an amateur with about 100 games experience" on an
IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 se ...
. They came to learn a great deal about chess, but neither Kotok nor McCarthy were known as chess players. Mikhail Botvinnik, three times world chess champion, wrote in his book ''Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning'' that the Kotok–McCarthy program's "rule for rejecting moves was so constituted that the machine threw the baby out with the bath water." The program drew criticism from Richard Greenblatt, who later wrote
Mac Hack Mac Hack is a computer chess program written by Richard D. Greenblatt. Also known as Mac Hac and The Greenblatt Chess Program, it was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mac Hack VI was the first chess program to play in hu ...
, which beat a person in tournament play, and more recently, from
Hans Berliner Hans Jack Berliner (January 27, 1929 – January 13, 2017) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was the World Correspondence Chess Champion, from 1965–1968. He was a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. H ...
, when he looked back on it in 2005. During the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, Kotok-McCarthy played (and lost to) the best
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n chess program in the first match between computer programs.. McCarthy begins at 0:43:48.


Spacewar!

Kotok contributed to one of the earliest interactive computer games, Spacewar!, and is sometimes called the first
video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
. Kotok did not write any of the ''Spacewar!'' code, but he did travel to Digital to obtain a sine-cosine routine that Russell needed. Graetz credited Kotok and Saunders with building the
game controllers A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game, typically to control an object or character in the game. Before the seventh generation ...
that allowed two people to play side by side.


Software

Edward Fredkin Edward Fredkin (born October 2, 1934) is a distinguished career professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and an early pioneer of digital physics. Fredkin's primary contributions include work on reversible computing and cellular automata. ...
, at one time at BBN Technologies (BBN) (Digital's first customer for the PDP-1), McCarthy, Russell, Samson, Kotok and Harlan Anderson met in May 2006 for a panel to celebrate the Computer History Museum's restoration of a PDP-1 (with
Gordon Bell Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engi ...
on tape). Their presentations illustrated the contributions of TX-0 and PDP-1 users to early
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...
. * Piner wrote
Expensive Typewriter Expensive Typewriter was a pioneering text editor program that ran on the DEC PDP-1 computer which had been delivered to MIT in the early 1960s. Description Since the program could drive an IBM Selectric typewriter (a letter-quality printer), i ...
which enabled the group to operate the TX-0 and PDP-1 directly. * Wagner wrote
Expensive Desk Calculator Expensive Desk Calculator by Robert A. Wagner is thought to be computing's first interactive calculation program.Alan Kotok (15 May 2006)The Mouse That Roared: PDP-1 Celebration Event Lecture Computer History Museum (Google Video link). Retrieved ...
. * On a second PDP-1 in the physics department, Daniel L. Murphy wrote the Text Editor and Corrector (TECO) text editor, later used to implement Emacs. * Samson wrote the type-justifying program known as
TJ-2 TJ-2 (Type Justifying Program) was published by Peter Samson in May 1963 and is thought to be the first page layout program. Although it lacks page numbering, page headers and footers, TJ-2 is the first word processor to provide a number of essen ...
, an early page layout program, and implemented the
War War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
card game. * Collaboration on computing waveforms with Dennis on the TX-0 led to Samson writing the
Harmony Compiler Harmony Compiler was written by Peter Samson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The compiler was designed to encode music for the PDP-1 and built on an earlier program Samson wrote for the TX-0 computer. ] Jack Dennis noticed and ...
with which PDP-1 users coded music. * Kotok and Samson worked together on T-Square (software), T-Square, a drafting program that used a ''Spacewar!'' controller to move the cursor. * Gross and Kotok built the digital audio program
Expensive Tape Recorder Expensive Tape Recorder is a digital audio program written by David Gross while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gross developed the idea with Alan Kotok, a fellow member of the Tech Model Railroad Club. The recorder and pla ...
. Early PDP-1 users wrote
programming software Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Programm ...
including an
assembler Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of ...
translated from the TX-0 over one weekend in 1961. Kotok later wrote an interpreter for the
Lisp programming language Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common u ...
in TECO macros. Kotok and his classmates are described as the first true hackers in the book '' Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution'' by
Steven Levy Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for ''Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book ...
.


Digital: 1962–96

After graduating from MIT, Kotok started at
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
as one of the company's first few dozen employees; in his 34-year career with the company, he held senior engineering positions in storage, telecommunications and software. He retired in 1996. He began in 1962 by writing a Fortran
compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...
for the
PDP-4 The PDP-4 was the successor to the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-1. History This 18-bit machine, first shipped in 1962, was a compromise: "with slower memory and different packaging" than the PDP-1, but priced at $65,000 - less than half th ...
, before contributing to the development of the
PDP-5 The PDP-5 was Digital Equipment Corporation's first 12-bit computer, introduced in 1963. History An earlier 12-bit computer, named LINC has been described as the first minicomputer and also "the first modern personal computer." It had 2,048 12- ...
instruction set. Under Harlan Anderson (vice president of engineering), principal architect
Gordon Bell Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engi ...
led a team, including Kotok as an assistant logic designer, which developed the first commercial
time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence ...
computer, the
PDP-6 The PDP-6, short for Programmed Data Processor model 6, is a computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during 1963 and first delivered in the summer of 1964. It was an expansion of DEC's existing 18-bit systems to use a 36-bit d ...
, designed and delivered in 1963–1964. Aiming at a scientific market, Digital machines had a 36-bit word length to accommodate
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
work in Lisp and to compete with IBM mainframe computers. In 1965, in what may have been the first around-the-world networking connection, a PDP-6 at the
University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilitie ...
in Perth was operated from Boston in the United States via a
telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...
link. Kotok became the principal architect and designer of several generations of the
PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, espec ...
,
DECsystem-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
and
DECSYSTEM-20 The DECSYSTEM-20 was a 36-bit Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 mainframe computer running the TOPS-20 operating system (products introduced in 1977). PDP-10 computers running the TOPS-10 operating system were labeled ''DECsystem-10'' as a ...
. Bell, Thomas Hastings, Richard Hill and Kotok wrote that the DECSystem-10 accelerated the transition from batch-processing to time-sharing and
single-user Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leavin ...
systems. With Kotok as system architect, the
VAX 8600 The VAX 8000 is a discontinued family of superminicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA). The 8000 series was introduced in October 198 ...
(known as Venus) was introduced in 1984 as the highest-performance computer in Digital's history to date, operating up to 4.2 times faster than the standard at the time. Kotok expanded his areas of expertise from engineering into teaching and business: following a suggestion of Berlekamp, he taught logic design at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
during the 1975–1976 academic year; he also earned a master's degree in business administration from
Clark University Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in the ...
in 1978, which prepared him for later work at Digital and W3C.


Web: 1994–97

While at Digital, Kotok recognized the Web's potential, and helped to found the
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...
. Early in 1994, in Zürich, Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee had met with
Michael Dertouzos Michael Leonidas Dertouzos ( el, Μιχαήλ Λεωνίδας Δερτούζος; November 5, 1936 – August 27, 2001) was a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...
to discuss starting a new organization at MIT. In April 1994, Kotok, Steve Fink, Gail Grant and Brian Reid from Digital traveled to CERN in Geneva to speak with Berners-Lee about the need for a consortium to create
open standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...
and coordinate Web development. Berners-Lee mentions the pivotal meeting with Digital in his book ''Weaving the Web''. As technical director of Digital's Corporate Strategy Group, Kotok was instrumental in creating the Internet Business Group which advocated early adoption and integration of Internet and Web-based technologies. Digital created the
AltaVista AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...
search engine, the Internet
firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spr ...
, the
Web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...
, the webcast and live
election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
returns. Digital continued its lead in Internet and Web development through difficult times, but Kotok questioned a corporate strategy that he believed consumed Web and Internet resources to sell Digital products like the
AlphaServer AlphaServer is a series of server computers, produced from 1994 onwards by Digital Equipment Corporation, and later by Compaq and HP. AlphaServers were based on the DEC Alpha 64-bit microprocessor. Supported operating systems for AlphaSe ...
. For example, he saw a missed opportunity in ''Millicent'', the
micropayment A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. A number of micropayment systems were proposed and developed in the mid-to-late 1990s, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful. A s ...
system for buying and selling
Web content Web content is the text, visual or audio content that is made available online and user encountered as part of the online usage and experience on websites. It may include text, images, sounds and audio, online videos, among other items placed wi ...
for fractions of a U.S. cent. Kotok was a corporate consulting engineer for Digital 1962–1997, W3C Advisory Committee representative for Digital 1994–1996, vice president of marketing for GC Tech Inc. 1996–1997, member of the Science Advisory Board for Cylink Corp., a consultant for
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
, and a content advisor for the Computer History Museum. Digital and GC Tech were early W3C members and were among the sponsors of the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW4) in 1995 in Boston. Kotok coordinated a birds of a feather meeting on ''Selection of Payment Vehicle for Internet Purchases'' on April 7, 1997, at WWW6 in Santa Clara, California. In La Jolla, California, he presented ''Micropayment Systems'' to the Electronic Payments Forum in 1997.


W3C: 1997–2006

Kotok joined W3C as associate chairman in May 1997. His role involved managing contractual relations with W3C hosts and member organizations, coordinating the worldwide W3C Systems and Web Team services to millions of pages and resources on the W3C website, and maintaining the W3C host site at the
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...
(CSAIL), where he was a research scientist. While he was associate chairman, Kotok was a member of the W3C management team, and worked closely with the W3C Advisory Board. He helped to establish a new W3C office in India and worked with an internal task force to reduce membership fees in developing countries. He was a major contributor to the ''W3C Patent Policy'' and chaired Patent Advisory Groups, including one for
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
. He briefly served as Domain Leader of the Technology and Society Domain which at that time included W3C's activity in digital signatures, electronic commerce, public policy, PICS, RDF metadata, privacy, and
security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
.


Notes


External links


Kotok Family Home Page

World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C)
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
(CSAIL) * * * ** particularly * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kotok, Alan 1941 births 2006 deaths MIT School of Engineering alumni American computer programmers American video game designers Clark University alumni Computer chess people Computer designers Digital Equipment Corporation people American electrical engineers Video game programmers Scientists from Philadelphia People from Vineland, New Jersey People from Cambridge, Massachusetts People from Cape May, New Jersey Vineland High School alumni Engineers from Pennsylvania Engineers from New Jersey 20th-century American engineers