John McCarthy, artificial intelligence pioneer, dies at age 84

John McCarthy, the inventor of programming language Lisp and a pioneer in "artificial intelligence" technology, died Monday night. Mashable reports that McCarthy was also one of the first people to propose "selling computing power through a utility business model," in 1961. Tributes to McCarthy poured in Tuesday, some from posters on Usenet, where McCarthy was an active presence, or from technology writers like Steven Levy, who wrote on Twitter: "Broke news to Siri that John McCarthy... died. She took it well but we humans will miss him." McCarthy's Web site also has a wide following.