More pain. The "father of the mouse" loses out on a jillion bucks.
Don't these idiots know they are supposed to be making money, instead of trying to help others/advance technology/whatever ?
For Personal Use Only
dailynews.yahoo.com
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Friday December 11 9:56 AM ET
High-tech tribute to mouse that roared
By Steve Silberman
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Wired) - A day-long tribute at Stanford University to computing pioneer Douglas
Engelbart became a soul-searching session about the ethical dimensions of technology in society.
Wednesday's symposium, ''Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution,'' brought together luminaries from many
wings of the industry that Engelbart helped create, including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, IBM
research director Paul Horn, virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, Stewart Brand of the Global Business
Network, and nanotechnologist Eric Drexler.
Engelbart is often called the father of the mouse, having debuted the now-ubiquitous device in 1968 at
the most celebrated demo in Bay Area history: a standing-room-only demonstration in San Francisco's
Civic Auditorium that was, in itself, a high-tech tour de force. The Stanford conference, organized by
forecaster Paul Saffo, marked the 30th anniversary of that event.
Employing video images beamed by microwave from Palo Alto, Engelbart's explanation of his work at
the Stanford Research Institute was the first public glimpse of many of the innovations that became the
cornerstones of the information age-interactive computing, word processing, hyperlinks, document
sharing, videoconferencing, and navigation in virtual space.
Footage of the original demo was shown at Wednesday's tribute. As a primitive cursor pirouetted
across a gray screen, Engelbart told the 1968 audience, ''I don't know why we called it a mouse. It
started that way, and we never did change it.''
For those who heard it, Engelbart's soft-spoken presentation hit with the force of a revelation that
computers-then used almost exclusively for brute-force number crunching-could be used to augment
human intelligence and collaborative problem solving.
Engelbart's lab at SRI was called the Augmentation Research Center, and many silver-haired
''Augment'' (as the lab became known) alums were in attendance in Stanford's Memorial Hall on
Wednesday.
While Engelbart's name may be forever associated with a chunk of hardware, the panelists at the event
made it clear that the scope of Engelbart's vision went beyond the mouse. His true legacy, said
Stanford history professor Tim Lenoir, was in perceiving computers as facilitators for communication,
rather than mere computation.
Lenoir quoted from a note that Engelbart had written to himself in 1964 after a brainstorming session
for the ARPAnet-the government-funded precursor to the Internet-that enthused that the advent of
network computing was going to signify ''a revolution like the development of writing and the printing
press'' combined.
Under Engelbart's aegis, a computer at Stanford became the second machine patched into the
embryonic Net.
The key to Engelbart's vision was the notion of bootstrapping: using computers and computer-assisted
communication to ''boost the collective IQ'' and ''get better at getting better,'' as he puts it.
In an afternoon session, Engelbart described the Bootstrap Institute, a foundation he launched with his
daughter Christina, as working to ''upgrade the human system''-the language, procedures, customs, and
habits of thought that have more impact on our efforts and organizations than the hardware we use.
Significant social paradigm shifts, however, require the development of new kinds of trust and reformed
notions of authorship, as several panelists pointed out-which are apt to take longer than the adoption of
a tool for pointing and clicking on a screen.
The day was an unabashed love-fest for the self-effacing Engelbart, who was moved to tears by the
first standing ovation of the afternoon.
''There was a generosity manifest in the demo in '68, and that generosity is alive here,'' observed
Stewart Brand, who operated one of the cameras in the Augment lab for the original demo.
Brand-whose own presentation elucidated his work with the Long Now Foundation in constructing a
10,000-year clock (''the first Y10K-compliant computer'') -- embodies the kind of bold, socially
conscious imagination Engelbart still inspires in his fellow researchers.
Like most collaborative efforts, however, ''Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution'' did not come together
without disagreements.
Andreessen's declaration that technology was ''value-neutral, a blank slate'' drew passionate dissenting
opinions from author Howard Rheingold and New York Times columnist Denise Caruso.
Several attendees noted that despite the fact that there were female Augment alums in the room,
Caruso was the only woman onstage, and she wasn't even listed in the event brochure.
Bill Gates and Microsoft were predictably cast as heavies by presenters who set forth open-source
software as one of the most promising employments of the kinds of collaborative process that Engelbart
championed, but when someone in the audience asked why Windows wasn't an example of software
''evolution,'' Saffo, who acted as moderator for the event, flatly refused to answer the question.
Hypertext visionary Ted Nelson's stint at the podium furnished comic relief, as he railed against Gates,
windows-based interfaces, and the Web (which incorporates some, but not all, of the hypertextual
elements Nelson conceived in 1960 for his Project Xanadu.)
''Why are video games so much better designed than office software? Because they are designed by
people who love video games. Office software is designed by people who want to do something else on
the weekend,'' Nelson said.
Backstage, Engelbart said that while the Web was ''a sterling example of real progress'' in developing
technology that could assist cooperative problem solving, he was still stung by the fact that even though
many researchers ''glimpsed the real potential'' as far back as the ARPAnet, some of the best ideas
developed by the Augment team had still not found widespread acceptance.
While Engelbart has been adopted by mouse-maker Logitech as its poster boy and Deminence grise,
Rheingold made the observation that the day's celebration of his work cast light on ''a great big blind
spot that neither government, not academic institutions, nor the marketplace seem to be equipped to
fill.''
He added, ''The things that came from Doug's research-it wasn't about an exit strategy or a tenure
track, and it wasn't about the boxes. All anybody talks about in the Valley is who's made a jillion
bucks.''
Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited.
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