Douglas Engelbart - Inventing the 21st Century
In this Podcast, “we look back to the man who wanted to augment human intelligence to help us work together to solve the world's most complex problems, and in doing so invented the 21st Century. How do we get smart enough to solve the really difficult problems? Douglas Engelbart said "the better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better" where our problem-solving abilities are constantly improved, and therefore so is everything we do!"
See also Avail Formats | Show Notes
The Public Debut of a Dream
The Public Debut of a Dream
“Doug Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” 60 Years On: In October, 1962, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart published a document that synthesized over a decade of research and careful thought, a document that would illuminate the work he would do for the rest of his career. 'Augmenting Human Intellect' is both a research report and a visionary manifesto for how computers and human beings could co-evolve to foster the highest levels of human flourishing. Engelbart sought to empower humanity’s capabilities to address its most complex problems, and he saw networked computing as an essential part of that capability...”
Collective IQ and Continuous Improvement
Collective IQ and Continuous Improvement
“How do you harness the collective intelligence of a group, solve difficult problems, and share what you learn?”
An excellent distillation and synthesis of Doug Engelbart's driving vision for navigating accelerating change. See companion article Improvement communities
How Humans Think When They Think As Part of a Group
How Humans Think When They Think As Part of a Group
“The fancy word for it is "entitativity," and it’s produced when people act and feel together in close proximity. We need it more, but we’re getting it less.” Not an Engelbart article, but it's right up our alley.
How to Think Outside Your Brain
How to Think Outside Your Brain
“Our culture insists that the brain is the sole locus of thinking. Ms. Paul challenges us to rethink what we think about thinking. Our bodies, our social networks and our surroundings, she argues, are “extra-neural” inputs that have a profound influence on cognition."
This article is a prelude to her new book The Extended Mind. Her work aligns brilliantly with Doug Engelbart's concepts of augmented intellect and collective IQ.
Related Articles Appearing In: Washington Post | Author's Website
The Extended Mind
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
“A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains—in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships.”
Although this book does not include or reference Doug Engelbart's work, it is quite relevant.
Keynote: Culture of Innovation at ARPA & Xerox PARC
Culture of Innovation at ARPA & Xerox PARC
“Keynote Speaker Alan Kay presents key lessons learned from the culture within the ARPA community and Xerox PARC that fostered so many technological breakthroughs, in such a short period of time.” Includes learnings from Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect Research Center. Stories that inform future cosmic scale innovators.
Video Contents: 0:01 Introductions | 04:29 Enter Alan Kay | 22:46 Discussing Engelbart |
See also Related Essay: "How?" | Event Site
Revisiting Engelbart’s ‘Collective IQ’ in the Era of AI
Revisiting Engelbart’s ‘Collective IQ’ in the Era of AI
“This PC pioneer believed technology was a tool to augment human intelligence — not replace it”
How? – When “what will it take?” seems beyond possible
How? - When “what will it take?” seems beyond possible
“When “what will it take?” seems beyond possible, we need to study how *Immense Challenges* have been successfully dealt with in the past. [...] Need higher levels of qualitatively different thinking than the thinking that caused the challenges, including how to set up and nourish the communities of top people [pursuing the solutions]." *Immense Challenges* call for cosmic vision and collective synergy.
This essay written for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Summit to accompany Alan's session VIDEO: Scale Up the Circular Economy - with Alan Kay
Augmenting Human Intellect: Vale Doug Engelbart
Augmenting Human Intellect: Vale Doug Engelbart
“His vision didn’t stop there: he proposed co-evolution of people and technology, and wanted people developing systems to be using the tools they were building to do their work, ... bootstrapping the environment. He early on saw the necessity of bringing in diverse viewpoints ... to get the best outcomes. And continual learning was a key component ... not just an ongoing reflection on work processes looking for opportunities to improve, but a reflection on the reflection process; sharing between groups doing the work reflection, to collaboratively improve.”
Reflections on our future
Reflections on our future
This article commemorates Doug's remarks from the Oct 1996 ASIS Conference on global complexity: information, chaos and control, where ASIS honored Doug with a Special Achievement Award. “We at the Bootstrap Institute say the world has one category of people who are operating and another category of activity that's improving the capability to do that work. So we called the first part the “A” activity and the next part the “B.” The “B” is that which is busy trying to improve how capable you can be at “A.” Because we have significantly more challenges coming, we must get a more effective “B” going to cope with that change. To improve the capability for doing “B,” you obviously have to add a “C” to improve your capability to improve...”
Doug Engelbart’s Design for High Performance Innovative Organizations
Doug Engelbart's Design for High Performance Innovative Organizations
Change Your Organization's Nervous System - “I have been a fan and follower of Doug Engelbart since I first discovered his work in the early 1970s. After his death in 2013, I revisited a videotaped interview I did with Doug in November of 1991 [in which Doug described] much of his seminal thinking about how to design high performance organizations. [...] In this article, I summarize a few of the high points from that interview.”
In Memoriam: Douglas Engelbart, Maestro of the Mouse and So Much More
In Memoriam: Douglas Engelbart, Maestro of the Mouse and So Much More
“Silicon Valley has lost one of its true visionaries — but his monuments are everywhere... Engelbart is best known as the inventor of the computer mouse, but leaving it at that is like praising Orville and Wilbur Wright for their pioneering role in the history of propellers... a passionate believer in what he called Collective IQ, [his 1968 demo] is still about the most intense tour de force of raw creativity and innovation that the tech world has ever seen...”
See also Remembering Doug Engelbart
BOOK: Holistic Management: Managing What Matters for Company Success
Holistic Management: Managing What Matters for Company Success
“This book teaches us how to increase the company's greatest asset, the organization's intellectual capability, it's 'Collective IQ.' [...] Douglas Engelbart, the patron saint of the computer industry, advocates continuously increasing "collective IQ" to expand the company's "capability infrastructure." [...] offers a structure and direction of work that can increase collective IQ.”
See Also: Book Overview | TOC | Chapter Summary
Collective IQ & Human Augmentation
Collective IQ & Human Augmentation - with Doug Engelbart
“In this podcast, learn how one man's lifelong passion to create a meaningful legacy of work that could benefit all mankind – the means by which we can harness our Collective Intelligence and Human Augmentation.”
Find it Here: Podcast | Description
A man, a mouse, a mission
A man, a mouse, a mission
“"Point-and-click pioneer Doug Engelbart is still going full-tilt trying to figure out ways to solve complex problems facing the world... If the name Douglas C. Engelbart ever comes up on TV's Jeopardy game show, the question doubtless will have been: 'Who invented the computer mouse?' In fact, that's hardly Engelbart's only claim... Ask Engelbart, and he says his life's work is about an even more audacious goal: trying to figure out ways to help the human race solve its increasingly complex problems...”
Global Knowledge Renaissance: World Library Summit 2002
Global Knowledge Renaissance: Selected Papers from the World Library Summit 2002
Compiled and edited by National Library Board Singapore | Times Books International, 2003 | Papers cover the broad themes of knowledge augmentation, cultural entrepreneurship and knowledge governance, including Doug Engelbart's keynote "Improving Our Ability to Improve: A Call for Investment in a New Future"
See Preview Doug's Keynote | Doug's IDG Award
Silicon Valley, Innovation, and the History of Modern Computing: A Conversation Among Doug Engelbart, Gordon Moore, and Regis McKenna
Silicon Valley, Innovation, and the History of Modern Computing: A Conversation Among Doug Engelbart, Gordon Moore, and Regis McKenna
Paul Ceruzzi of the Smithsonian Institution moderated this stellar panel. "A stimulating conversation among three of the “founding fathers” of Silicon Valley produced different views on why Silicon Valley is so unique. [...] Doug Engelbart began the forum with a brief account of how he made the kind of commitment that
Mike Malone described. [...] He saw that increasingly the problems of the world were the result of a human inability to deal with complexity. [...] Engelbart’s vision is for self-enhancing, knowledge-based systems that can be used to accelerate learning, problem-solving, and the development of new ways of organizing information and people to solve complex and urgent problems.”
This Article also available in PDF format
Nexus Issue 2.2: TOC for this Issue | About STS Nexus
Inventors discuss their sources of inspiration
Inventors discuss their sources of inspiration
Featuring a panel discussion of five inventors whose dreams transformed computing, medicine and consumer products -- Douglas Englebart, Brian Hubert, Raymond Kurzweil, Robert Langer, and Steve Wozniak -- the event celebrates the publication of Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse (MIT Press). 'Invention in technology is a form of magic,' said Kurzweil, 'in seeing the leap from a dry formula to an impact on people's lives.' Engelbart recommended that next generation inventors nurture collectively their 'dreams about how much people can improve. The mouse was just a windshield wiper. There are urgent big problems that have to be dealt with collectively.'”
Watch the Panel Discussion | Browse Book Review
Technology and the Quality of Being Human
Technology and the Quality of Being Human
“San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation and Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society (CSTS) have jointly implemented an awards program recognizing technology that benefits humanity." ... A case in point, the Millennium Project of the United Nations University. "The protagonist at the Board meeting was Doug Engelbart, Turing Award winner and recipient of the National Medal of Technology... a passionate advocate for what he describes as the “need for technological and human systems to increase their rate of co-evolution” if we are to effectively address complex and urgent problems like those identified in the Millennium Project.”
See also
This Article in PDF format | TOC for this Issue (pdf) | About STS Nexus
Co-Evolving Social Systems with Escalating Technological Change
Co-Evolving Social Systems with Escalating Technological Change
“How can individuals and organizations maintain a sense of control amidst the ever-accelerating pace of the information technology revolution?” According to panelist Doug Engelbart, "With escalating change in several systems, many forces will start to collide, politically, militarily, economically, and socially. [...] We need a strategy to deal with the changing scale brought on by the information technology revolution. [...] If we can make headway in dealing with complexity, which itself is a complex task, then we can use this progress to improve our ability to make progress. Thus we can bootstrap our way to an improved capability for dealing with complex, urgent problems. [...] and co-evolve with our technological systems to augment our collective IQ."
See also
TOC for this Issue | About STS Nexus
Douglas Engelbart: More Thoughts
Douglas Engelbart: More Thoughts from Cassandra
Douglas Engelbart can be credited with inventing much of the computing paradigm we all use today, but have we missed his most important ideas? Adam looks at where Engelbart has been and where he thinks we need to strategize for the future, given the accelerating rate of change: “Wouldn’t you think [an organization] would try to knock off two birds with one stone by creating products that radically improve the productivity of its own employees, with the understanding that doing so would result in products that would better meet the needs of other customers?”
Reference: This article was inspired by Doug's Turing Lecture | Slidedeck
Tools that make business better and better: A Silicon Valley legend
Tools that make business better and better: A Silicon Valley legend
“A Silicon Valley legend who pioneered the mouse and the Internet has been thinking about how groups can work smarter--companies, divisions, teams, whatever--longer than anyone else. Better than anyone too: His ideas--long incubated, long promulgated, and long ignored--provide a way of looking at how to improve corporate performance that's fresh and refreshingly practical. His name is Douglas C. Engelbart.
Inventor of the present works on the future
Inventor of the present works on the future
"If we are going to do any good with the collaborative work tools that computers provide, it is going to involve significant changes at all levels of our social system and our organizations" -- Doug Engelbart. Then and now, Engelbart understood that the most profound changes to result from his inventions were not hardware or software innovations, but social innovations - new ways for people to think, communicate and work together.
Computer Pioneer Works to Raise the ‘Collective IQ’ of Organizations
Computer Pioneer Works to Raise the 'Collective IQ' of Organizations
“If not for Douglas Engelbart, a great many of the technical innovations we consider integral to the personal computer revolution would not exist. [...] His motivating concept, still largely untested today, was that information technologies could serve as the connective tissue between people and information. The result, he said, would be an exponential increase in what he calls an organization's "collective I.Q,”
See also Denise Caruso interviews Doug Engelbart: Meeting the Creator on MSNBC's The Site
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