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Doug Engelbart Passes Away
lpress writes "If you use a mouse, hyperlinks, video conferencing, WYSIWYG word processor, multi-window user interface, shared documents, shared database, documents with images & text, keyword search, instant messaging, synchronous collaboration, or asynchronous collaboration, you can thank Doug Engelbart, who passed away today."
Guess he got first post
synchronous collaboration, or asynchronous collaboration
wtf?
Thanks for all of your contributions to our computing.
I use Microsoft.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I rather CAN'T thank him.
I believe this is something that should be mandatory for all computer engineering/science students should watch, along with getting a bit of a history lesson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a11JDLBXtPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61oMy7Tr-bM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNXLK78ZaFo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zz1SwCTCEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dVNxlLYTsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiJA7_Sw9aM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI8LZKW5Lwk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYDg2wr2QfI
The concepts for the time, in my opinion, are mind blowing. I hope there are some people in this world who are considering some equal mind blowing ideas for these times, although I do not think they could ever get pulled together into one demo like what Doug Engelbart did.
I got to see Doug speak about ten years ago. One thing he mentioned is that you can't let ease of use concerns limit capability. Ease of use is important but it can be sacrificed if necessary to give advanced capability. The example he gave was a bicycle. It's much more difficult to use than a tricycle but the benefits of bikes over trikes are so great that almost everyone goes through the effort to learn to use a bike instead of settling for a trike.
Doug never worked for Xerox.
He went from SRI to Tymshare.
Many people from Doug's lab went to work for PARC
"Please release me." Is one of my favorite songs!
Not for everything.
I am sure some of the stuff there would be another inventor for, but other things they may not have been. For example the Window Interface may not be around, but more of an interface with frames, Like Plan9 or Windows 8.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not exactly. But it's possible that one of the Xerox guys saw Doug Engelbart's demo and went, "Hmmm".
Proverbs 21:19
No, everyone knows it was Al Gore and Bill Gates working together.
Proverbs 21:19
In addition to the specific technical inventions, he did a lot of great work from the 1960s laying out how computers could augment human intellect. Most of his papers are available online, not only open-access but in readable HTML versions.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Engelbart never worked for Xerox; he worked at SRI (Stanford Research Institute, at the time.)
Xerox did to SRI what Apple did to Xerox: took the idea and built on it. (Microsoft later did the same to Apple, except for the whole building on part.)
You not only changed our world for the better, you were a good human being. Even with all your success you always remained thoughtful, generous, and kind. That touched my life even more than all the technological innovation. How you were with people was even more important than what you did for them.
Thanks for everything, and most of all thanks for being such a role model for me, Doug.
I'll miss you.
for those unsure of how to mourn, Here are a few tips.
Awesomewm users: remove dust from mouse (small black/beige peripheral.) place hand atop it for a moment of rememberence...both for doug and in trying to recall what people use this thing for
outlook users: Although its often said not to, today you may in fact click that link in your HTML email for "1000% DIS.CPUNT VJAGRA CIA.LIS"
Chatroulette users: Adjust the camera from its standard crotch-facing position to a more respectful head-facing position.
Microsoft Word users: Today, indulge clippy in his helpful banter and accept his offer of assistance in writing a letter. Embrace the ensuing application crash as proof that the spirit of Doug lives on.
VAX users: Get back to work installing VMS 5.0. Forget you ever heard of 'windowed' interfaces. also those TPS reports, we need them by EOD...so lets plan for saturday.
Excel users: As you stalk from cubicle to cubicle hunting for the rat-bastard who left the spreadsheet open this evening, ponder Dougs wisdom of shared documents and its profound impact on your ability to hunt down pudgy white coworkers, like some kind of middle aged predator.
Oracle users: Send a support ticket. Approach your multi million dollar obelisk of remorse and sorrow. slowly push unmarked $100 bills into the ventillation slots. Weep in knowing this is not what Doug intended.
PDF users: chances are youre holding a document that is nothing but an image with text...no search for you, so you may as well ponder Dougs infinite wisdom as you mash away at the spacebar in time to lady gagas judas.
YouTube users: "Doug Engelbart Harlem Shake Americas Got Talent" is certainly a mournful keyword search.
Management: each time you bored us with tales of (a)synchronous collaboration, know that it was pushing this great man one step closer to the grave. If you'd stuck to the 1 hour meeting rule and not called it on a friday, this man may still be alive today.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"you can thank Doug Engelbart, who passed away today"
Then, no. No, we can't.
Those three rarely come together.
RIP, Doug, and thanks for all the clicks!
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Well said.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Born in Madras, India, as a child Dorsey moved to Leicester, England, where he took an early interest in music. Initially ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_(singer)
Betcha didn't know that.
I'd never heard of Doug Engelbart when I unboxed my first Atari ST in June of '89. In that first year I'd learned of him, SRI, Xerox PARC, DRI, et al. From then on, from time to time, it would strike me out of the blue, often in the wee hours, just what a tremendous debt I owed Doug and the others for what could so easily be taken for granted. It is dangerous, I think, to become so blasé that we forget that it wasn't some 'force of history' or whatnot that has provided us so much; even if that were entirely true, it's still down to the particular people who actually had the ideas, devised the techniques, and built the devices.
And, if you'll trouble to read them, Doug's thoughts on the what and how and why have continual relevance. Even these days, in the midst of my 'desktop as appliance' and laptop as 'a convenience' daily whatever, some little thing will hit me and I have to stop a bit and say, "Wow."
Thank you, Doug.
"If you use a mouse, hyperlinks, video conferencing, WYSIWYG word processor, multi-window user interface, shared documents, shared database, documents with images & text, keyword search, instant messaging, synchronous collaboration, or asynchronous collaboration, you can thank Doug Engelbart, who passed away today."
Um, I don't mean to be insensitive, but it's a bit late to be thanking him for anything, isn't it?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I met Doug and spoke with him a few times when we were both at Tymnet, which was purchased by McDonnell Douglas in 1985. At the time, Doug had a shock or white hair but was still cranking out ideas. At that time, he was working very hard to sell his idea of a chord keyboard -- you had five keys for each hand and you "played" them to control the computer. Doug was amazing with them -- he code program and write documents extraordinarily fast with them. He thought that DEC might buy the idea and turn it into a product, but obviously that didn't happen. Doug was always thinking a generation ahead -- recall that at that time, we had not really accepted the mouse yet. But from Doug's perspective that was old news from almost twenty years ago. Talking to him was amazing -- just trying to get into the frame of mind he was in was challenging and fun. I wish I could have spent more time with him. Thanks for everything, Doug -- we still haven't caught up with you.
to list the passing of the inventor of the modern UI as a single-line footnote.
there are still greedy jerkoffs who think they "OWN" the "rights" to these EXACT SAME technologies and are still taking other companies to court over them. Looking at you, SCO, Apple, just to name a couple.
R.I.P
Where did he pass away to?
Yes, it is amazing how quickly the next generation or two can forget (or never learn) history. It is a constant struggle to keep the best of the past alive in our collective memories. And I say that not just as a trustee of a historical society. How many people who read slashdot have read "As We May Think" about a hypothetical "Memex" by Vannevar Bush that helped inspire Doug Engelbart's work, or "The Skills Of Xanadu" that helped inspire Ted Nelson's own work on hypertext that contributed to the World Wide Web among other things including research in nanotechnology? One of the things Doug made possible was potentially improving our collective memory, but it is hard to avoid getting weighed down in trivia.
I participated in Doug's Unfinished Revolution II colloquium (Unrev-II) run as ten sessions through Stanford and then the mailing list continued related discussions for a couple more years.
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/ba-unrev-talk/index.html
It was one of the best on-line experiences I've had overall.
I feel Doug's story shows why our conventional means of funding computer research via companies and grants and such are flawed. Here is the inventor of the mouse and a variety of amazing things, a very nice guy personally, and he had lots of difficulty getting funding in later years to continue innovative work. If he couldn't funding to do work on computers to make the world a better place, better able to deal with pressing problems, than who can? So, that suggests a need for a basic income, a gift economy, or some other economic approach, so individuals who want to do such work will have the time to do it, regardless of a previous track record.
A few of my many posts to those email lists, covering predicting the OLPC, talking about the singularity and S-curve limitations, asking about the moral basis of our innovations, and linking poetry and knowledge management:
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0061.html
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0754.html
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/1881.html
http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/2168.html
Anyway, it's a sad day. But I'm glad he got his chance to work on really cool stuff in hopes of helping humanity.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Doug had a great time, and the students gathered around him as a living hero. He was genuinely warm and deeply intelligent. I enjoyed talking with him any chance I could. I will always miss him. His contributions not only were truly extraordinary, but they originated from a constellation of his works in co-intelligence. RIP Doug
Damn. This guy did way more than Steve Jobs ever hoped to. :(
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
I visited him in the late '80s, along with a number of others of the hypertext startup I came out to CA to work for. It was sort of a pilgrimage to see the great man.
One of our people took the mouse from his computer and got Doug to autograph it. This left him with the ONLY mouse (at the time) autographed by Doug, because (as Doug mentioned) nobody had thought to ask him before. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Congratulations. You've scored a one-line trifecta, demonstrating that you don't understand evolution, you don't understand progress, and you don't understand Engelbart's contributions.
Do you seriously believe that one person cannot have made a significant difference in the course of technological progress?
I have been visiting slashdot almost from the day it started. In the early days I learned a lot by reading posts and following discussions on technical subjects by people with superior knowledge. It was inspiring.
Slashdot has not been like that for several years now. The interesting bits have become increasingly hard to find among all the patent nonsense, speculation and general news. (The Egyptian coup is news for nerds apparently).
I could put up with that. Even though I started visiting Slashdot less often and often just skimmed it before leaving off to sites like arstechnica or stackexchange.
But to see that Slashdot only spends _a footnote_ on the death of Douglas Engelbart, just really does it. This is not the Slashdot I knew and loved. We just have to face the facts and stop pretending; it is over.
So Slashdot, thank you for all the things I have learned and the joy you gave me over the years, but it is time to part my friend. Farewell.
Now I read the title, and 'got it' right away. Doug Englebart wasn't just the inventor of the mouse, but the bulk of the interface I'm looking at right now (and have looked at in continuously more advanced format since 1985 on my Amiga 1000). Compared to what came before, these tools are radical. I started off with computers that looked like dumb terminals. I know before that, there were punched cards and before that wire and plug sockets. Considering how he changed the interface of computing, I don't expect to see his name in mainstream media. People trust their lives to Dyjkstra's algorithm, but they have never heard of him either, likewise the internet wouldn't be without Dennis Ritchie, but all I heard about tech that week was Steve Jobs (who basically did nothing but bitch to those who knew). The rule: if you are the brilliant one who creates it, the world goes "meh", but if you are the one who makes a bazillion dollars off it, you are a hero.
Have gnu, will travel.
Darn. I'm very sorry. The world needs creative people like him.
I remember when my family first heard about this "mouse". (Yea, that gives you an idea about my age!) My parents went to a demo or lecture about computers. When they came back home, they giggled and told me that they'd seen someone control a computer "using a mouse". I said "heh heh - huh?". Then they told me about this wonderful invention called a "mouse", which let you control a computer easily.
Thank you, Doug Engelbart, for all of your many inventions! And my best wishes to your family.
Yes, I agree not having a main article on Doug's death is saddening and disrespectful to Doug Engelbart's legacy -- or at least an indication of increasing cluelessness or lack of historic awareness among the slashdot editors. Slashdot still has its moments though, but I agree, having been reading slashdot for ten or so years (I would have had a lower user ID except I did not post for a long time), it has changed.
Of course, people have been saying slashdot is dying since 2005 or maybe earlier, and Apple has been "dying" for decades, so, who knows what the future has in store? Contrast:
http://agilepartners.com/blog/2005/12/20/is-slashdot-dying/
with:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexbarn/archive/2006/01/12/512238.aspx
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The glory of the collective over that of the individual. And now for another "In Soviet Russia" joke ....
Have gnu, will travel.
See my other comment here: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3934063&cid=44184771
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
when all other funding was going to AI, Licklider also funded human-machine interaction via Doug. ... Licklider was instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research that led to modern personal computers and the Internet. In 1960 his seminal paper on Man-Computer Symbiosis 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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
"He has been called "computing's Johnny Appleseed", for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age. Robert Taylor, founder of Xerox PARC's Computer Science Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center, noted that ""most of the significant advances in computer technology -- including the work that my group did at Xerox PARC -- were simply extrapolations of Lick's vision. They were not really new visions of their own. So he was really the father of it all."[2]
But there were others even before that, from Norbert Weiner to Vannevar Bush to Theodore Sturgeon and others. Doug's life was a link in a chain that stretches back to the first idea of a "standing bear" cave painting made by the "Walking People" thousands of years ago to instruct the young.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Walking_People.html?id=-kTrc1oSkycC
Just like our lives now are links in a chain the hopefully stretches out to new future possibilities.
But that is not to take away from the importance of what Doug did with his life. Otherwise maybe we'd have only AI and not human-machine symbiosis?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Yeah, RIP
We are in desperate need of people that, like Dough, can think ahead of their time, focus on what people needs, and has the determination and courage to actually make it happen, without being a dick.
Thank you for being a source of inspiration.
I guess the phrase refers to the soul transporting to heaven in Christian religion.
Mentions Doug: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Some criticism of that: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/05/23/gladwell-on-innovation-truths-confusions-part-1/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thanks for the link and more history. I'll have to check out the PowerPoint file when not on a ChromeBook (just trying to test out a possible future of computing). One of the best academic course I ever took was with Michael Mahoney related to the history of technology, although that was just before he was getting into the history of computing.
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/computing.html
I implemented a software version of Memex, mentioned here in 2005:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156379&cid=13111905
Memex seems like the first version of a "Social Semantic Desktop"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_desktop
I've worked towards that on-and-off as time permits with my Pointrel system. I see you have a long list of related publications on technology and society it would be interesting to read through.
I don't know if he is connected to any of them, but William C. Norris who championed "PLATO" for computer-based education is another great example in that area of people trying to make computer innovations to help humanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Norris_(CEO)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_system
"PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) [1][2] was the first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I) generalized computer assisted instruction system, and, by the late 1970s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. Originally, PLATO was built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary -- university) to UIUC students, local schools, and other universities. Several descendant systems still operate.
The PLATO project was assumed by the Control Data Corporation (CDC), who built the machines with which PLATO operated at the University. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world; the last production PLATO system was shut down in 2006 (coincidentally, just a month after Norris died), yet it established key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games."
Alan Kay and his colleagues working on Smalltalk are yet another, somewhat as a follow on to Doug's work.
I just watched the 1950s movie "The Invisible Boy" (with Robbie the Robot") and it is interesting how it presaged so much later thinking on dangerous out-of-control AI. Human-machine symbiosis may have its own issues, but still seems more hopefull somehow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Boy
Still, I got that with the 1950s "Forbidden Planet", and I guess that shows the dark side of human-machine symbiosis, :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet
Technology is an amplifier. So what do we want it to amplify?
Soft humanities things like morality and aesthetics and stories we tell ourselves to make a mythology become very important in that context.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/06/26/023212/why-engineering-freshmen-should-take-humanities-courses
The 1950s story The Skills of Xanadu by Theodore Sturgeon is the most hopeful in that sense. It would be great to know whether Sturgeon was thinking about Weiner's or Bush's writings?
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thanks. I first read "The Machine Stops" about 30 years ago, seeing it by chance in a first(?) edition book at SUNY Stony Brook's rare books viewing room. I was so surprised to find a sci-fi story like that in such an old book!
I'm reminded of it when I use internet video conferencing, as one minor point in the book is that the videos were distorted and degraded.
If you like old sci-fi-ish stuff, JD Bernal's book here is great from the 1920s: ... Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. ...
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/
"All these developments would lead to a world incomparably more efficient and richer than the present, capable of supporting a much larger population, secure from want and having ample leisure, but still a world limited in space to the surface of the globe and in time to the caprices of geological epochs. Already ambition is stirring in men to conquer space as they conquered the air, and this ambition - at first fantastic - as time goes on become more and more reinforced by necessity. Ultimately it would seem impossible that it should not be solved.
Yet the globe would be by no means isolated. It would be in continuous communication by wireless with other globes and with the earth, and this communication would include the transmission of every sort of sense message which we have at present acquired as well as those which we may require in the future. Interplanetary vessels would insure the transport of men and materials, and see to it that the colonies were not isolated units.
However, the essential positive activity of the globe or colony would be in the development, growth and reproduction of the globe. A globe which was merely a satisfactory way of continuing life indefinitely would barely be more than a reproduction of terrestrial conditions in a more restricted sphere."
I may not have made much progress towards that, but that was essentially my life's work, inspired by JP Hogan's writings and others, before I read that book years later -- to find it envisioned decades earlier.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
But I got bogged down in trying to make better information management, simulation, and sensemaking tool, both because it was a step towards that and because that is cheaper for one person to focus on. An example is our garden simulator, because people will need to know how to grow food in space as well as on earth.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/summary_gwi.html
Learning to support human life with better sustainable recyclable manufacturing and agriculture on Earth also supports being able to live in space.
Bicycles truly are a very efficient means for transport for certain types of infrastructure.
I guess I can see parallels to Cuba a bit in that sense of "The Machine Stops" as the oil ran out. But Cuba apparently really rebounded and reorganized as described in that link. Decades ago I mused briefly of getting some place like Cuba or Russia interested in ideas that were the precursor to OSCOMAK, given interest in the USA seemed weak, as an effort to create networks of self-replicating high-tech villages, but while it may seem easy to imagine making progress with the support of a dictator, it certainly is a perilous situatio
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Well, I am even older -- started on unit record equipment and really understood it. Later, I wire-wrapped a single board computer in order to learn about TTL. But I did that without understanding the physics. I could use relays and TTL chips, but did not understand them. Same with programming -- started with low-level assembly language then moved to higher levels of abstraction -- first IOCS routines then Fortran. Today we program at still higher levels of abstraction.
But, I never could have built a relay from scratch let alone a TTL chip. Even us old guys were far from self-sufficient and capable of restarting "the machine" if it failed. How long did it take people to get from mud to pottery, rocks to steel and concrete, raw meat to cooked,sheep hair to shirts? We are all extremely narrow specialists.
Also -- you've picked a tougher sounding life goal than Doug Engelbart did.
I did a little bit of wire-wrapping myself to build an I/O system for Commodore equipment, but not much, and wire wrapping was going out of style even then. Good points about knowledge of physics etc. as a layer below. I do not know off-hand how to make a transistor chemically in practical terms, for example.
As for difficulty of lifework, it's a "standing on the shoulders of giants thing". One success (like with Doug) can enable the next, like the systems Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay and others pioneered in turn support my own ambitions. Compared to about thirty years ago when I started this quixotic scheme, self-replicating space habitats almost seem like an easy reach at this point (even if still decade or two away from a seed launch). Still a lot of work, but I can see how it could possibly happen by a global networked effort, as described here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
"We believe that thousands of individuals (such as the people at this conference) are ready and willing to make compromises in their own lives to nurture the space settlement dream at the grassroots level - but in a more direct way than has been attempted thus far. In particular, individuals could collaborate on the iterative development of detailed space habitat designs and simulations using nothing more than the computers they already have at home for playing games. While excellent progress has been made on the general engineering design of space habitats (in terms of basic physics and proof-of-concept projects), many of the details remain to be worked out. There have been individual attempts in some of these areas (e.g., the SSI Matrix effort), but a persistent collaborative community has not yet coalesced around constructing a comprehensive and non-proprietary library of such details."
More floundering efforts towards that:
http://www.openvirgle.net/
A better success by others?
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://openluna.org/
http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net/
Starting around age 63, my advisor at Princeton, George A. Miller, started plugging away at the (effectively) open source WordNet project and accomplished a lot in 20 years. WordNet underlies much of Google's success. My indirect hand in that:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/openvirgle/PdK35mSNoSU/3zLpZuljHiMJ
But likewise, I can credit his patient systematic work and decision to open source his effort as setting a good example for me.
And, at some point a system can begin to reflect on itself. I agree how little we know individually about how to make stuff in a complex technological environment (compared to day, a family farm, with self-replicating seeds). Thus my suggestion of something like "OSCOMAK" using computer networks to systematize such knowledge on how to make stuff. ... The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
"The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Suggesting it was the PC mindset: http://www.zdnet.com/the-shocking-truth-about-silicon-valley-genius-doug-engelbart-7000017660/ ... ..."
"I couldn't believe my luck. Over on another large circular table, half-empty, sat Doug Engelbart. I asked him if I could sit next to him and we talked for hours. I walked out with a great story, a story that no one had written before, a story of a genius whose work was largely killed by the personal computer "revolution" and how he'd spent decades trying to find companies to fund his work and research.
It's a story that shows Silicon Valley's ignorance of its own history and its disgraceful treatment of truly inspired visionaries such as Doug Engelbart, in favor of celebrating PR-boosted business managers who say they are changing the world but don't come close.
But the microcomputer and its promise of being self-sufficient, unconnected to anything, was thought to be the future at the time. And the counter-culture with its hatred of "the Man" and centralized systems of power and oppression, rejected the time-sharing mainframe based computer architecture that underpinned the work of Mr. Engelbart and his colleagues. Big centralized systems were out of favor in the computer research communities and so was funding, which went to microcomputer based architectures.
The promise of the individual, power to the people, the ideals of radical self-sufficiency that ruled the counter-culture movement became enshrined in the promise of the stand-alone Personal Computer. It's an example of how popular culture can affect something as seemingly distant and unconnected as computer architecture.
Reinventing the past
Today's computer systems are essentially what we had with time-sharing mainframes in the 1960s and 70s: personal workstations connected to a large central computer system (server farm), able to communicate with each other and run spreadsheets, word processors, and apps.
Ross Mayfield, in an interview with Doug Engelbart in June 2005, writes:
"We herald the PC revolution, but we should remember that it made us forget to share. Timesharing enabled groups to share a common pool resource, sharing that, which impacted social dynamics. With PCs, we were left on our own, however empowered."
He also points out that his work on keywords and tagging; and his work on computer augmentation to help solve some of mankind's most difficult problems.
Mentioned here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/07/0232259/silicon-valley-in-2013-resembles-logans-run-in-2274
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.