Sample Chapters
Preface by Doug Engelbart
It has been a pleasure working with Valerie and Eileen
on this book. I once got in trouble with librarians by
predicting the end of the book because a book does not
offer the capability for interaction. But it is a beginning. I
am hoping this will be a beginning of a dialog with you, the
reader. A few of my friends and colleagues have contributed
their perspectives in the following pages. I would like to
thank my wife, Karen, and my longtime secretary, Mary
Coppernoll, for their help on this book, and all of my
colleagues and friends for their support.
Appreciatively,
Doug Engelbart
Introduction
By Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg
Engelbart is often called the father of personal
computing. In 1968, he produced an event so groundbreaking it earned the name "the mother of all demos."
At the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco,
Engelbart and his team demonstrated a powerful integrated
personal computing system complete with robust
collaborative features (some of which did not yet have these
names): word processing, document sharing, trackback links,
hypertext, version control, integrated text and graphics—
and, of course, the computer mouse.1 These innovations have
become the foundations of personal computing. He has
received the highest honors for his contributions, including
the 2000 National Medal of Technology from President
Clinton.
Engelbart is most famous for inventing the mouse,
but his legacy lies with his conceptual framework that
foreshadowed the shift from the Industrial Age to the
Information Age. He is considered by many to be one of
the 20th century's greatest visionaries. Over the past 50
years, he has maintained that the mind-set of the linear
book, the alphabet, and even the Web page no longer suffice for serious intellectual pursuits in a global context.
To raise the collective IQ (a term of Engelbart's from the
1960s that caught on decades later) he calls for new ways
of communicating: new symbols, new ways of structuring
arguments, facts, and evidence. This paradigm shift will
enable us to tap into our collective perceptual capabilities for
large scale collaboration, creating an evolutionary step well
beyond Web 2.0 into a new paradigm for solving complex
global problems from environmental threats to war.
Engelbart has always been far ahead of his time. Imagine
reading his works in 1962, when room-sized computers,
with disks the size of tractor tires, could cost millions of
dollars. That was the year he described portable electronic
devices connected together, enabling people to look up and
share information on any subject.During the dot.com boom at the dawn of the 21st
century, bits and pieces of his framework emerged in
interesting and unintended ways. Blogs, wikis, hypermedia,
and networked communities of practice using dynamic
knowledge repositories, such ass the Center for Disease
Control website, the Human Genome project, and
Wikipedia proliferated.
But the haphazard, market-driven
diffusion of technology lacks Engelbart’s foundational
philosophical framework for augmenting human intellect
for solving complex problems.These writings by Engelbart and his colleagues place his
well-known technology achievements in the context of his
grand vision for a paradigm shift in our thinking. We believe
that Engelbart’s philosophy is at least as significant as his
inventions. His inventions were a result of his philosophy,
thereby proving its validity.What Engelbart wants most—and we want for him
and for the world—is for his philosophy to be understood,
applied, improved upon, defined, and understood in a new
way, to again be applied, improved, defined and....on and
on. He calls it “dialog.” As a man who has always had ideas
before words caught up to him, Engelbart has longed for
discussion to help articulate his vision.We responded to Engelbart’s call for dialog.
This edition
is the latest synthesis of our years of conversation with
him (Landau’s goes back to 1985, Clegg’s to 2004). We’ve
published several versions, starting with an online book in
2004. We have devoted a chapter at the end of this edition
to describe how we continually “improved our improvement
process” to work with Engelbart.
In addition to choosing the best of Engelbart’s words
about his philosophy, we’ve also included his memories
of episodes in his life that shed light on his philosophy.
And—in keeping with Engelbart’s commitment to dialog—
we have included chapters from people who have been in
conversation with him for many years, as well as chapters
from scholars who have studied his work and applied it in
their own. You will find many ideas and events mentioned
multiple times, in different ways—reflecting various
perspectives.
About Us
Valerie is a multimedia pioneer, professor, and inventor.
Eileen is a journalist, visual communicator and organizational consultant. We’ve used every tool at our
disposal—video, graphics, and many, many iterations of the
book with Doug’s inputs and corrections. In the end, what
best served the goal of conveying Doug’s philosophy was a
trusted partnership among three people determined to use a
linear medium to write about a non-linear, recursive, multilayered framework based on multiple views of information,
hyperlinking and collective dialog. The project was fraught
with internal contradictions and constraints. So, this is by
no means the final word; it is a step in furthering the dialog
in the hope that Engelbart’s much-needed philosophy will
reach the mainstream.
—Valerie and Eileen
“Just a Dreamer”
“Someone once called me ‘just a dreamer,’” Engelbart
recalled. “That offended me, the ‘just’ part; being a real
dreamer is hard work. It really gets hard when you start
believing in your dreams.”Engelbart’s curiosity and inventiveness flourished
in a childhood surrounded by Nature with freedom to
experiment and explore. Later, as a WWII veteran and
young engineer, Engelbart wasn’t interested in solving
simple problems with simple solutions. He dreamed of a
better way.“Every problem facing humanity on a global scale
is complex, and so, the solutions to those problems are
also complex. Solutions themselves often bring on new
unforeseen problems,” he hypothesized. “Models for
problem-solving do not address the needed complexity.
The solutions are too big for any one individual or any one
discipline.”
Engelbart created a multidisciplinary philosophical
framework––integrating social-cultural strategies with new
technology to create a way to portray information. The goal
was to include, view, and aggregate as much information
as possible in order to enable humans to act strategically to
solve global, complex problems.
In the following sections, Engelbart describes his early
years.
Engelbart on His Childhood
I grew up in and near Portland, Oregon. I was the
middle of three children, with an older sister and a brother
some 14 months younger. The two of us, my brother and I,
were quite close. My early years, ages four to 15, were during
the Depression and my father died right in the middle of
that, when I was nine. We moved to a rural area outside of
Portland, in the woods with a creek. We had a lot of freedom
and nature all around. I didn’t get involved in city activities,
nor did I have much interaction with people outside my
family. I had quite a bit of reflective time. I read a lot and
roamed the woods with my brother.I had to generate my own picture of the world. There
wasn’t anything to drag me into reality except the things I
tried to make or build that wouldn’t work.
I didn’t develop
the assumptions that many others did. I didn’t know what I
couldn’t do. So, it didn’t seem to dismay me much if I failed.
I had to try. Because my father was dead and it was the
Depression, socio-economic status didn’t mean much. Our
school district didn’t have its own high school. We had to
commute into Portland five miles away. We’d hitchhike, get
rides with neighbors, or walk. We lived on a one-acre plot.
Our garden was important and we had a cow. I’d get up at
5:30 in the morning and milk the cow and light the fires
for cooking and heating. We used wood stoves, but that was
nothing unusual in those days. I’d been up some two or three
hours by the time school started.
I didn’t feel any terrible
hardship. It was just the way things were.My mother was very cheerful and supportive and our
family was very close. We didn’t experience any great dark,
gloomy periods. It was just a way of life. My mother was
always positive about things, and never negative. The only
demand she made on me was to do the chores correctly. I
had a sense of freedom and also a sense that I really wasn’t
like the other kids in school. I assumed they always knew
what was going on all the time and I didn’t. I was very shy,
even at 12, 13 years old. I can remember walking pathways
to the country store and somebody coming along who knew
our family very well, but I would be too shy to meet their
eyes so I would look down at the path as they walked by.
Girls frightened me terribly.I had a dream once of making a balloon with a
framework underneath so that I could mount bicycle-like
pedals, and drive with a propeller to move around the sky.
I actually tried to decide how I’d build it and how I’d get
the hydrogen. I remember reading someplace that you
could pass steam over red-hot iron and the interaction
would create hydrogen. It would oxidize the iron and leave
the hydrogen free. So I built a huge fire and put an iron
pipe across it to generate steam. Those were all things that
seemed possible. I had a proclivity to dream the picture and
then say, “let’s go.” I also assumed that somehow I wasn’t
like other people; I didn’t understand their clubs or the
way they operated socially and I didn’t feel I had to try. It
didn’t bother me if I was different.
That’s still one of my
characteristics and problems. It doesn’t bother me to think
about something that I can not see any direct way to get to.
If it is possible, why not think about it? That has been an
underlying problem for decades now.I often say, “Well, it’s just over on the other side of that
canyon. So all we have to do is go.” It is always surprising
to me that other people would expect me to tell them how
we’re going to get there directly. That it is not enough to
say, “Well, it would be important to get there and there is
probably a way. Let’s go.” Years later, when I had to manage
budgets, other people would come to me with ideas they
would want to implement and I’d say, “My God, where’s this
guy coming from?”
And then I’d realize, “Boy, that’s just the
way I often sound.”When I was in the service I had time to think through
a lot of things. I generated a sort of algorithm: the rate at
which a person can mature is directly proportional to how
much embarrassment he can tolerate. And I realized that
embarrassment didn’t seem to bother me very much, because
of my upbringing and the perspective I had about the world.
Something Benjamin Franklin wrote was so beautiful,
“You wouldn’t worry half so much about what other people
thought about you if you realized how seldom they did,” and
I’d say, “Oh, that’s right.”I seem to have a lot of intuitive capability. I just don’t
mind at all not being able to explain to people how I
reached something. It doesn’t bother me.
Intuition is
important to me and I have a pretty logical head, etc., but
I’m not very good at budgets and figures and explicit plans.
They get in the way. I always needed other people to come
along. Then I’d say, “just on the other side of that canyon.”
Then usually somebody would start a plan for some roads
and get it together. I’ve always depended on that. Until they
show up, there I am, floundering around, and pointing across
the canyon.
I bought an old car I found in a barn when I was 13.
It had a brass radiator and was 10 years older than I was, a
1916 Model T Ford. The parking lights were kerosene lamps
and it had a brass radiator. The first-year cars had electricity
and a generator. The headlights were a couple of big bulbs
tied to knobs, so the faster the motor ran, the brighter your
lights were. The seat was way up high. There were no starters
in those days. You had to crank it. I just loved that thing. It
took me seven years to get it running. I’d ride my bicycle all
over to find parts, spend a quarter here and a quarter there.
But the car ran. The guy that ran the local garage about a
mile away let me borrow a tool. I’d ride up there on my bike
and borrow the tool I needed. And as soon as I finished, I
took it back to him until I needed it again or needed another
tool. That was the only way that I could possibly get that
engine apart.
Please participate in the dialog by posting your comments on our blog
http://engelbartbookdialogues.wordpress.com
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