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Doug Engelbart has died

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Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#61

Post by mtraven »

rmason wrote: post #23

He was one of the keynotes at a conference I attended out in the Valley in the early nineties. Tremendously inspiring guy and a much better speaker than a lot of tech people. What I remember from that day was that he was very, very humble with a great sense of humor. He was truly one of those Xerox Parc giants upon whose shoulders our entire industry rests upon.

Don't think he was ever actually a member of PARC, although his ideas and collaborators certainly inhabited the place.

Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#63

Post by mtraven »

Engelbart not only had amazing vision, he had the ability to turn it into working demos. And he was able to inspire others (at PARC most notably) to work in the same way. His mouse is now everywhere of course, but his more important ideas, eg for tools to support collaborative thinking, still remain to be realized.

The history of Engelbart's approach to HCI (Augmentation of the Intellect, or IA) and its more-or-less friendly rivalry with AI is quite interesting. AI got more of the research money back in the day, but IA seems to have been more generally successful, although not under that rubric. And nowadays, the borders between them are blurring as humans and computation get more closely connected.

Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#64

Post by kyledrake »

Without Douglas Engelbart, none of the personal computing tech we have today would have been even this remotely far ahead. He was the first person to believe in the Personal Computer.

He got to pass on after seeing his vision come to life. It must have been an amazing experience for him.

Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#65

Post by stefanix »

I had the chance to meet Doug as a student a couple of times. He showed me and my friend the NLS system and thought us basic typing on the chord keyboard. He was the grandpa I never had who's wisdom extends to the technology of the future. I hold him in very fond memories.

Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#67

Post by Uhhrrr »

robotresearcher wrote: post #42
Uhhrrr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh - I think the younger programmers were right on that one.

They were both right. The web brought them together. We didn't have to choose after all. I have a fabulously powerful personal workstation on my desk, a slimmer, more modest one in my bag, a thin client in my pocket, and a bunch of upstream data centers that provide amazing services. Some people might hanker for a completely decentralized P2P model of the Internet, and BitTorrent shows this is still hugely relevant.…

I meant the part about centralized power being highly suspect. We have certainly seen all too well recently that that part is true.

Re: Doug Engelbart has died

#68

Post by coldtea »

epo wrote: post #45
Uhhrrr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh - I think the younger programmers were right on that one.

Not really, Facebook, Google, the cloud... All essentially mainframe-like services. Most people nowadays don't need their own computer they just need a simple display/interactive terminal, what did we use to call those? Oh yes, CRTs, iPad for you youngsters.

No, I think he means the young programmers were right in their distrust, not in their prediction of what will win:

The conflict was both technical and social: the younger programmers came from an era where centralized power was highly suspect

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