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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
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 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
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
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.
You are right. If only the slacker had invented a way of talking to the dead!
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.
Those three rarely come together.
RIP, Doug, and thanks for all the clicks!
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Now you see why nobody hires nerds to write eulogies.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
Except Xerox actually contributed a lot of elements to the computer GUI.
Apple just added the "trashcan" (which many don't use today).
Except 1. Apple paid Xerox (one of the most lucrative agreements PARC ever made), and 2. Apple added way more than the "trashcan"... like noun-verb actions (click on something, then click a menu item to do something, rather than the other way around), overlapping windows, and, of course, don't forget rounded corners (and the general-purpose "region" algorithms that made them possible), and finally productized it in 1984 instead of just fiddling around in a lab like Xerox or taking over a decade to make a reasonable product like Microsoft.
E pluribus unum
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.
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
Talking to the dead is easy. It's getting them to answer back that the tricky bit.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Synchronous collaboration: used computers to support collaboration at the same time -- computer-based meeting room -- see photo on my post. Asynchronous collaboration: Created shared database or documents created and edited by multiple people.
This is no time to be a literal, pedantic dork. If you speak English, you know what I meant.
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.
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.
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.