I explained him to a friend of mine as "basically the father of HCI". It's not precisely true, but it captures the gist and import better than "he invented the computer mouse".
I'd go with "computing pioneer". Then again, that headline could be less likely to encourage people to read on and find out what Engelbart actually did.
i'd say "brilliant visionary of the computer's potentials."
that still misses the fact that the world failed to develop
those possibilities in any meaningful way, but that kind of
myopia would be hard to address no matter what one said...
>that still misses the fact that the world failed to develop those possibilities in any meaningful way
I don't know about that. I'm frequently engaged in realtime collaborative editing of rich, interactive datasets with people on the other side of the planet. The specific mechanisms Engelbart pioneered underlie most of that infrastructure.
In under 50 years, we've progressed from the relatively abstract methods he developed, to actually seeing systems developed on those principles in the wild, in frequent use by literally billions of people.
I think you do a disservice to all of those who have helped to bring this about by discarding their work as "myopic".
i'm sorry if you feel personally offended, but
if you think that today's computers (which are
thousands of times more powerful than the ones
that engelbart was working with) are -- to use
his phrase -- "augmenting human intellect", then
i would certainly like to have you tell me how.
because i see society using these supercomputers
to exchange pictures with their high-school chums
on facebook, and instagram photos of their lunch.
and (let us not forget) to _track_ those people,
so we know the best advertisements to serve up.
all of which might be acceptable trade-offs _if_
we were also augmenting human intellect as well.
but we're not.
so it certainly appears to me that the only things
we are "augmenting" is our stupidity and our greed.
and if you bring this to the attention of anyone,
they'll turn the blame on you for "being negative".
> if you think that today's computers are ... "augmenting human intellect", then i would certainly like to have you tell me how.
Isn't it obvious? I have immediate access, in almost every physical location, to a data store which, while not quite the sum total of human knowledge, is pretty close to it. It's meticulously organised, indexed, hyperlinked, and easy-to-use.
The fact that many people (including me) use this for social interaction too does not detract from that at all.
You are essentially writing off the entire Web as nothing more than Facebook, Instagram and Google Adsense.
i'm saying we have failed to actualize a very huge potential.
and oh yeah, sure, we've taken some 49 steps on the journey.
(and 27 of 'em actually moved society forward! imagine that!)
and we could pat ourselves on the back for our "progress"...
but that ignores the fact that the journey is a thousand miles.
nor do we seem to realize that the journey has become a race,
a race against time, because the greed and stupidity that i
talked about above is turning our planet into a place that
will all-too-soon become one on which humans can not survive.
(shortly after all the other large mammals on it go extinct.)
so, like, dude, enjoy your "social interaction" while you can.
For what it's worth, as of right now the title reads "Computer Visionary Who Invented the Mouse" (the URL remains the same as the title posted in HN, which leads me to believe the title was changed).
The article itself is rather long, and I found it a thorough professional biography. The headline was meant to grab the attention of the laymen, and I think losing a little perspective in order to raise general awareness and relateability of the piece to the general public is acceptable in this case.
I was just listening to one of Douglas Crockford's talks which discussed the contributions Engelbart made to computer science. What really stuck with me was the sheer number of new concepts he showed in his demo, which, though made in 1968, would showcase features not seen for decades, and some of which are still not effectively in use. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth the hour and forty minutes.
I think this is also a good moment to reflect on how incredible it is to be involved in a science which is still so much in its infancy that seminal figures in its development are still alive and well. Let us not forget their contributions, and most importantly, not overlook the concepts that, if employed today, can advance us far beyond where we are now.
He was not just an inventor of the mouse, but of almost all things we use in development today: collaborative editors, video calls, hypertext, versioning.
