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ENGLEBART

                                               November 13, 2018

  On the occasion of Englebart's
  death, it occurred to me that
  many people didn't quite know
  what he had done.  For many
  years his newspaper tag-line               ENGLEBARTS_BARD
  was "the inventor of the mouse",
  which while true enough greatly
  understates what he did.

                                                  
  Back when most programmers were still punching       
  decks of cards and doing batch submission where      
  you could wait hours to receive the results,         
  when the Computer Science intelligentsia was         
  obsessed with ideas like Artificial Intelligence     
  (i.e. getting the computer to do more without        
  having to submit another damn deck of cards),        
  Englebart conceived a vision of computers as         
  partners rather than servants, Englebart             
  envisioned a world where computers were tools        
  for networked, interactive collaboration that        AUGMENTATION     
  would increase human intelligence rather than        
  replace it.                                          
                                                       
                                                      
  In other words, he envisioned the modern world.    
  Except for the increased intelligence part.
  
  
  


                
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