Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart

Alan Kay made scathing comments [1] on the World Wide Web browser (reinventing a broken wheel) at length in a lecture "Normal Considered Harmful" for computer science students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For context: Alan himself invented WYSIWYG at Xerox PARC. He was present at "the mother of all demo's" by Douglas Englebart [9]. Ted Nelson who invented bidirectial hyperlinks 'outside of the file' and Xanadu [6,7] got Alan in touch with his future wife [2] and Alan was there at Apple when Bill Atkinson made Hypercard. He mentions that when he told Tim Berners Lee about the much better previous designs of Douglas Englebart, Ted Nelson and Alan's group at Xerox PARC, Tim was chagrined (that he had not read any of the papers about earlier and much better designs of 28, 25 and 20 years before the WWW browser in 1993). Of course Alan also discusses how the web should have been done. In short, it should be that when you click a hyperlink you load a virtual machine in a secure sandbox of a Operating System Kernel. The virtual machine would then render the (bitmap or vector) pages. Operating System 101, well known in 1965. Of course, Alan's team did implement this (several times). I can demo all this software if you contact me. I also give lectures on this. Email me at morphle [at] ziggo [dot] nl for a video where Alan Kay, Douglas Englebart and Tim Berners Lee meet and talk about this at a forum discussion. You can ask me about anything related to Alan, Ted or Douglas, I maintain an extensive archive with all scientific papers, emails, talks, interviews and lecture video's. Alan, Ted and Douglas worked closely together and where friends. TED's beautiful eulogy [3] for Douglas is a wonderful speech where he bitterly indirectly refers to the ignoring of Douglas' work by Tim. Alan made a demo with Apple in 1987 on what the WWW should be able to do [4,5]. [1] Normal Considered Harmful link [2] Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at "Intertwingled" Festival link [3] Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart ▶ this video [4] link [5] link [6] link [7] link [8] link [9] link

>[...] but unlike his other innovations, the keyset failed to catch on. I'm sad that he and others like Ted Nelson and Brett Victor would rightly say that his most important innovations have so far failed to catch on. But there's still time to raise awareness and make them real! Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart ▶ this video >Ted Nelson's emotional and moving eulogy for his friend Douglas Engelbart. Given at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, on December 9, 2013. An Homage to Douglas Engelbart and a Critique of the State of Tech: link >You don’t need me to tell you that Douglas Engelbart was one of the greatest men of all time. We gather today, in pretense of unanimity and concord, to croon over Doug’s ashes and grab for scraps of his robe. >Everyone here will of course say they are carrying on his work, by whatever twisted interpretation. I for one carry on his work by keeping the links outside the file, as he did. >Some are no doubt here to cheer and march behind the mouse, as in the opening of the Mickey Mouse TV Club of yore. Let them be happy in that celebration. >But the real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration. >Don’t get me wrong, the people who gave us all those fonts were idealists too, in their way — they just didn’t necessarily hold a very high view of human potential. >I used to have a high view of human potential. But no one ever had such a soaring view of human potential as Douglas Carl Engelbart — and he gave us wings to soar with him, though his mind flew on ahead, where few could see. > Like Icarus, he tried to fly too far too fast, and the wings melted off. [...] Doug and Karen Engelbart marry Marlene and Ted, May 2012: link >Poignant ceremony with sweet pledges, at the Marin Civic Center. Ann and Bill Duvall are co-celebrants. Underexposed and streaky, but the event is the important thing. (Battery ran out before the final verdict. Other camera was far away.) A few words on Doug Engelbart: link >Doug Engelbart died today. His work has always been very difficult for writers to interpret and explain. >Technology writers, in particular, tend to miss the point miserably, because they see everything as a technology problem. Engelbart devoted his life to a human problem, with technology falling out as part of a solution. When I read tech writers' interviews with Engelbart, I imagine these writers interviewing George Orwell, asking in-depth probing questions about his typewriter. >Here's the most facile interpretation of Engelbart, splendidly exhibited by this New York Times headline: >"Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88" >This is as if you found the person who invented writing, and credited them for inventing the pencil. (This analogy may be more apt than any of us are comfortable with.) >Then there's the shopping list interpretation: >His system, called NLS, showed actual instances of, or precursors to, hypertext, shared screen collaboration, multiple windows, on-screen video teleconferencing, and the mouse as an input device. >These are not true statements. [...]