Black History is infinity ➰ Have you ever stopped to think about why your computer allows multiple people to work together at the same time? Why teams can collaborate across time zones, devices, and continents—and the system just knows how to keep everything in sync? That didn’t happen by accident. Dr. Clarence “Skip” Ellis helped make that possible—long before collaboration became a feature, a platform, or an expectation. As computing systems moved into governments, corporations, and research institutions, the central challenge was no longer computation itself. It was coordination. How could machines support collective work, shared decision-making, and accountability across people, time, and distance? Ellis focused on that problem before the field even had language for it. Beginning in the late 1960s, Ellis conducted pioneering research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW)—a field he helped establish. His early papers examined how digital systems could mediate human interaction: how computers might model collaboration, manage shared context, and enable groups to think and act together. These ideas became the conceptual backbone of networked collaboration decades before they were embedded in everyday software. This was foundational work. Before email reshaped organizations. Before shared documents, version control, or real-time collaboration became standard. Ellis was helping define how humans and systems interact—reliably, repeatedly, and at scale. That contribution extended far beyond collaboration tools. By treating coordination as a core computational problem, Ellis influenced the evolution of human–computer interaction, distributed systems, and intelligent software design. His work reframed systems not as static tools, but as environments that must anticipate human behavior and adapt to collective use. That perspective sits at the core of how AI systems operate today. Modern AI-driven platforms—whether enabling teamwork, automating workflows, or supporting complex decisions—depend on principles Ellis articulated early: systems must understand interaction, manage shared context, and support collective intelligence rather than individual input alone. In 1969, Ellis became the first Black person to earn a PhD in computer science, achieving that milestone amid deep structural barriers within the field. He went on to serve in senior roles across academia, industry, and government research, including work at IBM and leadership positions shaping computer science education and research agendas. Throughout his career, Ellis maintained a clear conviction: collaboration does not emerge by accident. It must be designed—encoded into the logic, architecture, and assumptions of the system itself. That conviction defines his legacy. From early research laboratories to the collaborative and AI-mediated systems that structure modern work, Ellis’s ideas continue to shape how humans and machines think, decide, and build together. This is what it looks like when collaboration becomes infrastructure—and infrastructure becomes invisible. Consider this a reminder that our world was built—and is still sustained—by Black brilliance, labor, and vision. 📍 Follow along this month as we continue honoring the builders, the breakthroughs, and what comes next.