Doug Engelbart

[cos]

From: Christina Engelbart
Date: Wednesday, July 3, 2013 6:31 AM
Subject: update on my father

Very sorry to inform my father passed away in his sleep peacefully at
home last night. His health had been deteriorating of late, and took
turn for worse on the weekend. I will circle back around soon, for now
just wanted to give you all advance notice and look forward to
discussing your thoughts as I am a bit fuzzy at present.

He had a grand vision of a better world: What if everyone had their own little computer, usable and convenient, immediately responsive to their actions? What if that computer could display graphics, and allow people access to lots of information and organize it, and let them collaborate with others? Then everyone else working on making the world better, in many different ways and fields -- all of them would be made more effective in their endeavors.

The lab he founded and ran at SRI developed, among other things: the bitmapped display, the mouse, and an early implementation of hypertext. He also spun off the first Internet NIC from his lab, and recruited Elizabeth Feinler to run it.

He had a grand vision, and set to work on it, and made significant progress during a time when very few people were considering such things... and then lived to see it all come true and change the world.

Edit: A good profile in the NY Times.

Comments

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

Much of the book /What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry/ is on Engelbart and it describes a lot of his insights, of which the mouse is probably the least interesting. Starting from how he took his insights of scale from aeronautics (how small models have different surface area ratios and that leads to different characteristics) and applied it to issues of scale for informational tools -- his first demo was a pencil attached to a brick, and how removing the brick opens up uses that weren't possible with the brick; but of course how ubiquity of computers can change the way that we use computers, etc. His ideas were about people and information, and computers were just a specific means. Some of his ideas even seem to predict "web 2.0" -- back before we even had personal computers. He also applied his techniques to things like how to run a meeting -- inventing many concepts of brainstorming etc before anyone else was thinking critically about effect use of teams of people. He also had tragic flaws, and the book goes into a lot of the specifics about government and university funding and politics etc that lead to some people and projects being successful and some not.