Other books by this author--
Learn how a utopian vision to save the world laid the foundation of the personal computing revolution.

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Product Description

Engelbart is often called the father of personal computing. In 1968, he produced an event so ground-breaking 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.

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.

Engelbart 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 have 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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #376314 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-22
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 6.00" h x .50" w x 9.00" l, .37 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 139 pages

Review
Centuries of silo thinking and win-or-die ideological and economic competition have finally generated a global crisis. Now either we collaborate on a global scale to solve the new global problems, or we won't survive. The technology is available to do so. Billions of intelligences are waiting to participate. How do we bring the two together? We are at a decision crossroads. And as this book vividly demonstrates, Doug Engelbart as been there all along, waiting for us with the answer.

Emmy-Award Winning Historian James Burke --Email to the authors

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Customer Reviews

Father of collaborative computing
While Doug Engelbart is best known as the inventor of the mouse, the man is responsible for so much more. Englebart conceptualized social networking more than 50 years ago! He described using connections to boost collective intelligence before computer networks existed. The first connection of the internet ended in his office at SRI. You've probably heard the tale about Steve Jobs lifting the Mac's windows, icons, and mouse from Xerox PARC; PARC got them from Doug Engelbart.

Valerie and Eileen talked with Doug for several years to tease out his amazing story. They've succeeded in capturing Doug's thoughts in 140 pages of simple, accessible language and graphics. If you want to know where Web 2.0 came from, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Doug Engelbart anticipated it all
By 2009, computers have become ubiquitous; their use plays some part in nearly everything we do. Even as little as 20 years ago, who could have foreseen the impact computers would have on our lives today? Doug Engelbart did. From getting information from our minds to the computer screen, to sharing the information with others, to making it available to the whole world over the Internet, if Engelbart didn't foresee it or directly create it, he laid the groundwork for it. He didn't work alone, but collaboration was part of what brought his dreams to reality. The Engelbart Hypothesis not only gives us the story of the man and his work, but offers pointers for a style of thinking that could benefit everyone.

The Man Who Leaped the Information Age
This book provides invaluable insights into the life of Doug Engelbart, who in my opinion is the most important visionary of the 20th Century (or more accurately, the century from 1950 - 2050). I often refer to Doug as the 'man who skipped the Information Age', which I define as a brief overlap between the Industrial Age and the emerging Knowledge Age. This past December marked the 40th anniversary of 'The Demo', the first comprehensive demonstration of interactive computing, and provides a blueprint for an approach to solving the tremendously complex challenges confronting us. Beyond the intellectual aspects of Doug's work, this book also provides insights into Doug's mental models, his reflections on why he has been able to persevere through decades of resistance to his ideas.

I discovered Doug's work in the early 1990s, and his ideas are the reference perspective of my worldview, and have guided my professional career ever since. As I have been reading this book, I recognize its importance for addressing the most fundamental challenge of the Knowledge Age -- how we resolve the issues surrounding intellectual property. At the core of this intellectual property challenge is the tension between maintaining the integrity of a visionary's ideas, safeguarding these ideas from a blurring dilution as these ideas become more widely known, and the need for developing shared understandings necessary to continue the quest to realize the vision.

For further reference regarding Doug's work and "The Demo", visit the Doug Engelbart Institute site, http://dougengelbart.org Also see the 40th Anniversary Celebration event videos at: http://www.sri.com/engelbart-event-video.html, especially the highlights from The Demo and his daughter Christina's presentation, "Driving Vision", http://www.sri.com/engvideos/c_engelbart.html