http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/faq-fork.html
Man, there are some questions in there I need to update. You know how
ridiculous it is to try to keep a current list of FoRKers?
Speaking of FoRK, in my recent FoRKpost
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/nov98/0134.html
I stated that the mouse was born thirty years ago December 9th. I
received several emails from FoRKers stating that I was wrong, that the
mouse was born in the '70s at Xerox Parc.
Here's a column from today's LA Times about the origin of the mouse as
part of Englebart's vision
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/COLUMNS/INNOVATION/t000114038.html
which is included below. One big lesson is:
> For all of his genuinely high-minded ideas about collaboration,
> Engelbart was a control freak. Brilliant scientists flocked to his
> vision but many left in frustration over his reluctance to make amazing
> technology adapt to people rather than the other way around.
Don't be such a control freak that you get in the way of your own
insanely great ideas... a lesson for us all...
> Decades Later, a PC Visionary's Views Continue to Bewilder Some
>
> LA Times Innovation Column, Monday, December 14, 1998
> By Charles Piller, charles.piller@latimes.com
>
> Technology spin masters have debased few words more than
> "revolutionary." But last week, a symposium at Stanford University
> commemorated a moment in the history of technology that really did
> change everything.
>
> On Dec. 9, 1968, Doug Engelbart showed the computing world its future.
>
> He began his most famous of demos with this question: "If you in your
> office, you as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer
> display backed up by a computer that was always alive and was instantly
> responsive to every action you have, how much value can you derive from
> it?"
>
> Consider that in 1968 "computer" meant a large, astronomically expensive
> box ministered to by high priests of engineering. "Interface" referred
> to paper cards with holes punched in them. The IBM PC would emerge in 13
> years, the Macintosh in 15.
>
> Engelbart skipped several evolutionary stages, showing a computer that
> was like a human among Neanderthals. It used three input devices: a
> keyboard, a mouse (one Engelbart invention whose basic design survives
> today) and a five-key pad that with combinations of strokes offered the
> full range of characters on a standard keyboard.
>
> He also demonstrated video conferencing in an on-screen window, word
> processing, a drawing program and collaborative editing of documents
> over a network-complete with variable levels of control.
>
> Alan Kay, himself a luminary for his work at the Xerox Palo Alto
> Research Center and then Apple Computer, uses the terms "romance" and
> "destiny" to describe the demo.
>
> "It was one of the greatest experiences I've had in my life because it
> was the totality of the vision," Kay said.
>
> "To me, [Engelbart] was Moses opening the Red Sea," he said. "It reset
> the whole conception of what was reasonable to do with personal
> computing."
>
> About 2,000 geeks, students, journalists, technology groupies and true
> believers nodded at Kay's words, remembering the moment or being drawn
> into the sense of awe.
>
> Still, most speakers at the symposium, titled "Engelbart's Unfinished
> Revolution," lamented how slowly and incompletely his larger
> vision--driving human effectiveness to ever-higher levels--has
> progressed. Nearly everything he showed came to market--after a delay of
> 10 to 25 years. But something central to useful innovation seemed lost
> in the frantic rush to make a buck on PCs and the Web.
>
> "Our ability to do software for any purpose, and particularly for human
> purposes, is incredibly low," said Kay, taking a thinly veiled slap at
> Microsoft's Bill Gates. The crowd clearly agreed with his suggestion
> that the dominating mediocrity of Microsoft Windows and Office retard
> innovation.
>
> "Word processing is a geek's notion of what writing should be," said Ted
> Nelson, a hypertext innovator, explaining why video games are so much
> better designed than office software. "Video games are designed by
> people who love to play video games. Office software is designed by
> people who want to be doing something else on the weekend."
>
> Ironically, Engelbart should share the blame for the industry taking
> decades to grapple with his pioneering work.
>
> For all of his genuinely high-minded ideas about collaboration,
> Engelbart was a control freak. Brilliant scientists flocked to his
> vision but many left in frustration over his reluctance to make amazing
> technology adapt to people rather than the other way around.
>
> (His five-key input device was one example--a lucid idea that would be
> copied by the makers of keyboard alternatives for people with repetitive
> stress injury. After only a few months of practice, you can use it to
> type acceptably fast.)
>
> Engelbart disciples found homes at Xerox PARC and Apple, which
> ultimately developed his ideas for the masses.
>
> Undaunted, in recent years Engelbart has taken on an even more ambitious
> goal: helping people improve performance by catching up with rapidly
> changing technology.
>
> "Some day, we will have individuals or teams that vastly outperform what
> we see today," he said in an interview. "I call them higher-IQ
> organizations." Such organizations would operate by "augmenting rather
> than automating" their tasks and procedures, Engelbart said.
>
> In a presentation to the symposium, Engelbart talked about putting
> "discipline into the evolutionary process" for what he called "human
> systems"--social organizations that operate on qualities like culture,
> intelligence, custom and skill. He wants to help people more effectively
> collaborate and exploit "tool systems" that create a vast "dynamic
> central knowledge base" changing at the pace of an electron in a
> microcircuit.
>
> His nonprofit organization, the Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, Calif.,
> exists to train technology SWAT teams to help organizations "target
> collective IQ for aggressive improvement" for "increasingly faster and
> smarter product cycles as well as faster and smarter improvement
> cycles."
>
> But something bothers me about the concept, even beyond the vague catch
> phrases and the incomprehensible flow charts he showed that contrasted
> so sadly with the clarity and power of 1968.
>
> Elevating the collective IQ to sync up humans and machines has an
> insidious side: It accepts technology as the inexorable pacesetter. The
> person again conforms to the machine. There's a reason people are often
> such a tiresome drag on technological progress, refusing to jump on the
> bandwagon of a beneficent digital future: They cling to human emotions,
> qualities and rhythms that technology brushes aside.
>
> Thirty years ago, people instantly grasped that Engelbart was right.
> This time, the audience seemed bewildered. And not a single corporation
> has yet to adopt his methods.
>
> Still, given the experience with his first set of ideas, I'd give this
> one some time to germinate. Check this space in 30 years.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
The locus of computing has clearly moved from the useful manipulation of
information to the painting of icons and the tracking of mouse balls.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, Unix Review, Feb '95