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Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford

Posted by emmett on from the wonder-what-he'll-use-for-a-pointing-device dept.

Lansdowne writes "Douglas Engelbart, the father of the mouse, has begun a 10-week free colloquium entitled 'An In-Depth Look at The Unfinished Revolution'. A course description is available, as are live and archived webcasts. Based on the first session, this looks like a great series for the thinking Slashdotter."

1 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Consultant-speak rubbish? (Moderate me down!) by Ravenfeather · · Score: 3

    Well, this is probably a surefire target for flames as well as for "flamebait, -1", but I can afford the Karma hit, so what the hell. I'd really like a decent answer here.

    Engelbart has done a lot of great stuff, there is no doubt about that. But unless I'm missing something, the course description should be enough to turn off a thinking slashdotter, or thinking human being of any persuasion whatsoever. I mean, consider session 1:

    The Next Frontier - How Big is Big?
    The first session will set the context for the overall colloquium by describing the conundrum of increasing urgency and complexity of problems facing society's organizations and institutions, and the concomitant requirement for a strategic approach to augmenting organizational capabilities. This will include the necessity to shift paradigms, a particularly difficult activity for large organizations, and introduce the elements of Bootstrapping strategy and the ways in which the material will be covered throughout the colloquium.

    Or session 2:

    Augmenting Organizational Capabilities.
    The second session will present ways in which organizations can augment their capabilities by being pro-active in the evolution of techniques and approaches within the "human systems'" perspective, keeping in mind, and in advance of improvements in "tool systems." This pro-active approach is meant to reduce the time for large scale improvements that require simultaneous changes in human system elements and tools.

    Is this stuff for real? Even if I tried, I couldn't write a better parady of the kind of corporate-consultantspeak nonsense that passes for wisdom in the valley these days. Or does Engelbart have to phrase it this way to get the attention of the people who need to hear it most? Or if I had gone to business school, would I find this sort of prose as easy to parse as I do my own area of the scientific literature?

    Someone help me out here! What is going on? Has the emperor lost his clothes yet again? Or is there just something wrong with my eyes?