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A few words on Doug Engelbart

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Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#31

Post by kaptain »

I found this article by Bret enlightening. The expectation, though, that Engelbart's legacy could be communicated clearly by the New York Times in the obituary is too high.

The headline reads like this:

> Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88

Imagine, then, if the headline read:

> Douglas C. Engelbart, Augmenter of Human Intellect, Dies at 88

The former is much clearer and understandable, especially taking into consideration the audience of the New York Times. Bret's article has the luxury of expounding and explaining to an audience that is sympathetic to his values; I myself was ignorant of Englebart's contributions as well as his personal ideology when it came to this life mission, and so greatly appreciate Bret's writing.

But, while the NYT article might seem untrue or ignorant to those who knew Engelbart and understood him, for most people, the appreciation for Engelbart comes out of the more 'mundane' things that were the side effects of his vision: the mouse, hypertext, etc. Most can appreciate the significance of these inventions, though the value of Engelbart's core works might escape them.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#32

Post by msutherl »

kaptain wrote: post #31

I found this article by Bret enlightening. The expectation, though, that Engelbart's legacy could be communicated clearly by the New York Times in the obituary is too high. The headline reads like this: > Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88 Imagine, then, if the headline read: > Douglas C. Engelbart, Augmenter of Human Intellect, Dies at 88 The former is much clearer and understandable, e…

Douglas C. Engelbart, Computer Visionary, Dies at 88.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#33

Post by weland »

chime wrote: post #20
xradionut wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the huge focus on web development set CS back at least two decades in certain areas. The industry has been so intent on reinventing applications through the browser, it's lost ground in what can happen in areas like Engelbert's or Smalltalk or real hypertext.

If you think of technology progress as a global simulated annealing problem, it is ok to step back a bit to get out of the local maxima. Web Dev may have taken us back 20-30 years in certain areas but once caught up, it can take us much further than the previous methods could have ever expected us to. The previous methods in this case being, compiled software that require specific devices/OSes and require a very high…

Web solutions also require specific devices and web browsers, really; I can't think of a single jaw-dropping JS demo around here that didn't meet with several complaints related to it simply not working under certain browsers (and a lot more complaints about performance). Aye, if you put enough time and hacks into it, you get it to run on pretty much any browser. Until the next update, that is.

> require a very high level of competency in all aspects of development

Crude tools, development methods and principles are a surrogate for simplicity, not an actual manifestation of it. Barring the fact that you sacrifice performance, code maintainability and, to a high extent, security, I also think the question of productivity remains open. I find it stunning that young web developers are ecstatic about how their tools allow you to get from idea to result so quickly, when they are pretty much on-par with where Motif was in the mid-'90s. Not to mention the truckload of CSS hacks you need to make something that looks like a button (but without native looks) out of an anchor-that-really-shouldn't-be-a-button-but-it's-the-closest-thing-html-has-got. I don't think that can take us much further than compiled software could have taken us -- and slowly, but surely (with stuff like asm.js), it looks like a lot of people are rediscovering that.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#34

Post by tempestn »

akanet wrote: post #4

I found that the quip about how the document that they are sharing while having a conversation is not screensharing as we commonly understand it in modern parlance to be pretty illuminating. That modern screensharing is in several ways worse than a demo that came out decades ago is frankly amazing. I've tried to recapture a bit of that early magic with https://coderpad.io/ (multiple cursors, realtime editing/executio…

Shared documents in Google Drive work pretty well for this - multiple cursors, integrated chat (although text-only I believe). But yes, this is decades later; we should be light-years beyond this, but are instead only just rediscovering it.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#35

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kaptain wrote: post #31

I found this article by Bret enlightening. The expectation, though, that Engelbart's legacy could be communicated clearly by the New York Times in the obituary is too high. The headline reads like this: > Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88 Imagine, then, if the headline read: > Douglas C. Engelbart, Augmenter of Human Intellect, Dies at 88 The former is much clearer and understandable, e…

This is true, the NYT is not at fault here. Bret got his message about Engelbart out by fighting a target to show some contrast between perception and reality, which is a useful writing technique. A strawman, but a meaningful one.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#36

Post by ehsanu1 »

weland wrote: post #33
chime wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think of technology progress as a global simulated annealing problem, it is ok to step back a bit to get out of the local maxima. Web Dev may have taken us back 20-30 years in certain areas but once caught up, it can take us much further than the previous methods could have ever expected us to. The previous methods in this case being, compiled software that require specific devices/OSes and require a very high…

Web solutions also require specific devices and web browsers, really; I can't think of a single jaw-dropping JS demo around here that didn't meet with several complaints related to it simply not working under certain browsers (and a lot more complaints about performance). Aye, if you put enough time and hacks into it, you get it to run on pretty much any browser. Until the next update, that is. > require a very high…

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu...

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#37

Post by weland »

ehsanu1 wrote: post #36
weland wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web solutions also require specific devices and web browsers, really; I can't think of a single jaw-dropping JS demo around here that didn't meet with several complaints related to it simply not working under certain browsers (and a lot more complaints about performance). Aye, if you put enough time and hacks into it, you get it to run on pretty much any browser. Until the next update, that is. > require a very high…

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu...

I think we both know that's not what I was referring to. It's stuff like this one (PhoneGap, but really, it's like this almost everywhere): Back. Unless I am mistaken and you can build the whole UI out of form elements (perhaps you can, but I'm not sure I've actually seen that done anywhere), that's simply not sufficient.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#38

Post by juretriglav »

I found this article to be very thought provoking with regards to Engelbart's work, but I can't help but read Bret's own worries in it. As if he himself fears being presented/remembered purely based on his inventions (Bret Victor, the inventor of the iPad interface) and not his goal (intends to invent the medium and representations in which the scientists, engineers, and artists of the next century will understand and create systems.)

As a side note: why can't we, the general public, appreciate people like Engelbart with the same fierceness before they are gone? I'm sure they'd like to know their life was incredibly meaningful.

Re: A few words on Doug Engelbart

#39

Post by Tloewald »

This is a good article but it's important to understand that vision doesn't necessarily trump implementation. Steve Jobs also had a vision of augmenting human intellect (one at a time rather than collective), but he's remembered for the things he built in pursuit of the goal, not the goal. Ted Nelson's vision for hypertext is also more transcendent than what we got from the world-wide web, but on examination it turns out that hos vision is flawed and unrealizable (in practice there is never a canonical reference for any text) while what we've actually built actually works.
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