I, Cringely: "Even the Best Technology Can Be Ignored If It Is Difficult to Classify"

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040826.html

"I spent an afternoon recently with Doug Engelbart, talking about making computing history and troubleshooting Doug's DSL line. Doug, for those who haven't heard of him, conceived of and then went on to invent much of what we value today in computing from the standpoint of the user. Networks, graphical computing, hypertext, the mouse -- Doug's the guy behind all of those in one way or another. He is best known as the inventor of the mouse, but his work goes far beyond that. Doug did most of this at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, CA. And nearly all of those innovations first came to him during a momentary fugue state Doug entered while driving to work one day in 1950."

This is a completely off topic, but very cool article about the creator of many of the modern computing concepts we take for granted today - and how he was ridiculed for them. Worth a read!

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040826.html

"I spent an afternoon recently with Doug Engelbart, talking about making computing history and troubleshooting Doug's DSL line. Doug, for those who haven't heard of him, conceived of and then went on to invent much of what we value today in computing from the standpoint of the user. Networks, graphical computing, hypertext, the mouse -- Doug's the guy behind all of those in one way or another. He is best known as the inventor of the mouse, but his work goes far beyond that. Doug did most of this at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, CA. And nearly all of those innovations first came to him during a momentary fugue state Doug entered while driving to work one day in 1950."

This is a completely off topic, but very cool article about the creator of many of the modern computing concepts we take for granted today - and how he was ridiculed for them. Worth a read!

[Kris Kumar]

8O Wow...

I work for a big corporation (a company that has a history of ignoring some of its best innovations) and I too have had first hand experience of the cold shoulder - most of the times good revolutionary ideas don't go far. The upper management finds unique ways to discourage you or scrap the project. Its hard to sell someone on a new concept.

I just had to go out and do a search, found this video clippings of the momentous occasion.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html