Talk:Douglas Engelbart

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[edit] Why that weird stuff had to go

Some anon IP user put in a weird, weird, paragraph that I have taken out. It was as follows:

Engelbart has repeatedly said that no one recalls who coined the term the "mouse" -- nor why. The "tail" remains speculation. He also stated at an SRI banquet following his National Technology Award that Bill English deserved equal credit, but that Stanford Research Institute chose/needed to register the patent in one name, and chose his. Thierry Bardini is a thorough researcher and fine writer, but never worked with Engelbart. To say Engelbart was "strongly influenced" by anything after the age of 15 is dubious; he has always been a thinker, but not a great reader or listener.

I have no idea where this person is coming from with these crazy ideas, especially the last one. If he or she had actually bothered to read almost everything published by Engelbart (I have), they would have realized that Engelbart was strongly influenced first by Bush, Whorf, and Licklider (all three of whom were cited and discussed in Engelbart's seminal 1962 paper, which has been posted on several Web sites). Furthermore, Engelbart's writings after 1970 began to borrow a lot of ideas from Peter Drucker (particularly the "knowledge worker" concept), and Engelbart explicitly acknowledged as much in his published writings at the time as well as in the 1986 interview with the two Stanford librarians (which is also on the Web somewhere).

If that person actually has personal knowledge of Engelbart (for example, as a former SRI or Tymshare employee), that would be great. But otherwise, Wikipedia's NPOV policy requires that articles stick to what's generally available about someone in the published literature. Even if Engelbart's own writings somehow misrepresent who has influenced him and how, this article should not imply such a wild claim unless and until it can be substantiated. --Coolcaesar 00:57, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Even if the author had personal info, wikipedia is not for first hand research.

70.248.186.8 01:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

It's Douglas Englebart, not Engelbart

Uh, dude, if you actually review the documents on file in Special Collections at Stanford University (I've been there three times), the guy clearly signs his name Douglas Engelbart. I think we can safely assume that he knows how to spell his own name. Also, the vast majority of articles ever published about him (and I personally have most of them on file) give his name as Douglas Engelbart. --Coolcaesar 02:57, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Doug says (when reminding people to spell his name with Engel, not Engle: "My last name is German - from the Angels, not the Angles". --Grlloyd
Would be nice to mention the spelling problem in the article. Benefit: you find be article by searching for "Englebart", too. -- 'Dude2'(anon)
'Engelbart' not 'Englebart'. I should know, I'm his granddaughter. Riverdove (talk) 03:52, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good tone edits that could also help the Vannevar Bush article

I completely agree with Coolcaesar. BTW I think this is a very well written article now. Perhaps someone who is interested in Engelbart and his interests might also be interested in having a look at the related Vannevar Bush article and hammering it closer to NPOV. That article is not horrible, but it does have a couple wingy paragraphs in it such as the one that Coolcaesar has corrected here. --Threepd 15:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Corrected YUri Rubinsky Award date

Doug received the award from Yuri in 1995 at the 4th WWw Conference in Boston. I was there as a co-worker of Yuri.

( I Lack wikimedia skills to put a big (5) here If we are going to link Engelbart to co-evolution, can there be some relevent description at either end? Perhaps, (on thi page) a discussion of technosynthetic, not "typical" cooevolution. hence it appearing undifined and (seemingly) irrelevant , if one clicks through to the co-ev page?:thanks--Choz 08:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Obscurity?

I would quibble a bit with the choice of words describing how he “slipped into relative obscurity after 1976 due to various misfortunes and misunderstandings.” It would be more appropriate to say his concepts became unpopular in the changing social standards of the times. At this point, his ideas were a bit out there for most in a very Telsa-esque manner. I also doubt the authenticity of his seemingly behind the times opinions on personal computers. As a grandchild, I have it on fairly respectable authority that he had been predicting the use of personal computers in each person’s home since before a computer could fit in a city block. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kylemangan (talk • contribs) 09:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Removing memetics category

I am removing the memetics category from this article since you learn no more about the article's contents from the category and v.v. Since so many things may be memes we should try to keep the category closely defined in order to remain useful. Hope you're okay with that. The link to meme would be enough I suggest. Facius 11:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Are you aware as to why this article was added to the memetics category in the first place? You appear to be emptying the category just because you feel like it. —Viriditas | Talk 12:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Doug's Indian Background

I've read the bio. What part of India or China was he born in? What kind of visa, H1 or L1, did he use to get into the US and did he work for Tata Consulting, InfoSys or WinPro? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.223.21.51 (talk) 00:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon in 1925. Riverdove (talk) 04:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Not neutral

I find the following passages hardly neutral (but not only those - a lot of the article sounds like it):

"Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity after 1976 due to various misfortunes and misunderstandings."

"At Tymshare, Engelbart soon found himself marginalized and relegated to obscurity"

"the MIT Media Lab invited Engelbart to dialogue at the Media Lab and 3 wonderful discussions gave Engelbart the glimmer of hope that he has been long seeking, that his concepts had taken root and a new generation is moving it forward."

Rodrigo de Salvo Braz (talk) 04:36, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

That section does seem a harsh, even a bit on the dramatic side. I've been interested in his work for a long time, and if I remember correctly he has a bio on his institute's webpage that covers this. I'll drop a link here and maybe clean it up myself if RL lets up on me in the next few days. kitsune361 (talk) 08:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)