He did much to initiate this by funding research that led to significant advances in computing technology, including today's canonical graphical user interface, and the ARPANET, which is the direct predecessor of the Internet.

[16][17] In April 1963, he sent a memo to his colleagues in outlining the early challenges presented in establishing a time-sharing network of computers with the software of that time.

[19] After serving as manager of information sciences, systems and applications at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York from 1964 to 1967, Licklider rejoined MIT as a professor of electrical engineering in 1968.

[20] Project MAC had produced the first computer time-sharing system, CTSS, and one of the first online setups with the development of Multics (work on which commenced in 1964).

Multics provided inspiration for some elements of the Unix operating system developed at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in 1970.

[21] Following a second stint as IPTO director (1974–1975), his MIT faculty line was transferred to the Institute's Laboratory for Computer Science, where he was based for the remainder of his career.

[27] While at MIT in the 1950s, Licklider worked on Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), a Cold War project to create a computer-aided air defense system.

His ideas foretold of graphical computing, point-and-click interfaces, digital libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and software that would exist on a network and migrate wherever it was needed.

In 1960 his seminal paper on "Man-Computer Symbiosis"[29] foreshadowed interactive computing, and he went on to fund early efforts in time-sharing and application development, most notably the work of Douglas Engelbart, who founded the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute and created the famous On-Line System where the computer mouse was invented.

Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking".

He goes on to write in the same article: "In short, it seems worthwhile to avoid argument with (other) enthusiasts for artificial intelligence by conceding dominance in the distant future of cerebration to machines alone".

Peter Highnam, DARPA director in 2020, focused on human-machine partnership as a long-term goal and guiding light ever since Licklider's 1960 publication.

A large mainframe computer was designed to be shared by up to 30 simultaneous users, each sitting at a separate "typewriter terminal".

[34] While at IPTO he convinced Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and Lawrence G. Roberts that an all-encompassing computer network was a very important concept.

[39] In the same 1968 paper, J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor wrote, "Take any problem worthy of the name, and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its solution.