I think one key to understanding his work is to understand how he helped make computers more accessible.<p>Among many things, he believed that &quot;a computer should be just another piece of lab equipment.&quot; That they should be a basic tool.<p>Clark designed &quot;small&quot; computers, and it is no coincidence that the Linc was later marketed by Digital Equipment, a company all about the minicomputer that greatly increased computing accessibility. This company and the open academic culture that Clark was a huge part of led to greater accessibility software too. Would we have the world of Unix without the PDP series and the culture around it? Probably not!<p>Clark&#x27;s role in computers was to be among the leaders of a sort of rebellion against monolithic and expensive computing, and his work led us the world of personal computing and open source software.