3 ms·

Doug Engelbart's advice to a young software developer [video] (youtube.com) 183 points by DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 39 comments ht

Doug Engelbart's advice to a young software developer [video] (youtube.com) 183 points by DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 39 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121629 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [–] I found this incredibly interesting stuff on Valerie Landau's youtube channel of Douglass Engelbart, her mentor. The videos have apparently been viewed only a few times, but they deserve much more attention, because the ideas presented are so important and relevant today! She was a long time friend and collaborator with Doug Engelbart, and she was responsible for transferring the 1968 film of The Mother of All Demos from film to video so it could be preserved. She tracked him down and interviewed him, and after airing the interview, he asked her to help him articulate his vision to share with the world, which she's been working on since then. https://www.youtube.com/user/islandeweller/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/islandeweller/videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Landau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Landau Valerie Landau is an American designer, author and educator. She serves as Director of Assessment at Samuel Merritt University where she designed a software application that facilitates analysis and assessment of how effectively an organization is meeting their goals and objectives at course, program and institutional levels. She has filed two patents along with her colleague and mentor Douglas Engelbart. Their most recent patent (filed April 2010) describes multitouch interface for chorded text entry. The new patent is inspired by Engelbart's early work developing the Chorded keyboard. They also released an application for the iPhone for chorded texting called "TipTapSpeech". Engelbart and Landau also collaborated on writing the book "The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart" along with co-author Eileen Clegg. Landau is also a co-founder of Program for the Future, a non-profit organization that promotes Engelbart's vision of Collective Intelligence. She also is author of the seminal book on online education "Developing an Effective Online Course" and earned the "Online Pioneer" award. Landau, also known for her work in multimedia at Round World Media and for her work mentoring students in a three-year project studying and applying the Engelbart Hypothesis. and created an online archive of Engelbart related events and videos. She is an instructional and interaction designer and has worked on many award-winning projects, educational games and online courses. In addition, she leads high level research delegations to Cuba. Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA ---- Engelbart Explains Binary Text Input. Douglas Engelbart explains to co-inventor, Valerie Landau, and some blogger how binary can be used for text input. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB_dLeEasL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB_dLeEasL8 Engelbart: Think about if you took each finger, and wrote a one on this one, a two on this one, a four on this one, and a sixteen on this one. And every combination would lead clear up to sixty three. And so writing here like this the alphabet: A... B... C... D. E. F. G, H, I, JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ! ---- Engelbart Using HandWriter. Douglas Engelbart demonstrates early prototype of The HandWriter with Valerie Landau. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wAD2aji3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wAD2aji3Q Q: So whose ideas was the glove? Engelbart: I invented actually a separate keyset with the five keys, and her idea, you can make a glove to do that. Q: And what's the advantage of using a five key chording system? Engelbart: Well, when you're doing things with the mouse, you can be in parallel, doing things that take character input. And then the system we had, it actually gave you commands with characters, too. Like you had a D and a W, and it says, "you want to delete a word", and pick on which word, and click, it goes. M W would be move a word. Click on this one, click on that one, that one could move over there. Replace character, replace word, transpose words. All those things you could do with your left hand giving commands, and right hand doing it. ---- iChord: Clips from video of Eric Matsuno & Valerie Landau showing their new iPhone app to Douglas Engelbart. To Douglas C Engelbart and Bill English, and to Karen Engelbart, Roberta English and Mary Coppernoll. Present in spirit but not in molecules were: Evan Schaffer and Dr. Robert Stephenson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XXdnu5n9vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XXdnu5n9vI So we're going to be able to be configurable for whoever's hand. [...] Go ahead and give it a try: so swiping it down puts it in the history, and swiping it left takes the last ... ---- Andres Types His Name Andres writing his name on TipTap late on a Saturday night. I arrived home after a party and found him typing on TipTapSpeech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WI88q7coEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WI88q7coEY ---- This final silent video is chock full of photos and memories of Douglass Engelbart's friends and family, drawings, whiteboards, posters and brainstorming sessions! Memories with Douglas Engelbart: Photos from my work with Douglas Engelbart creating a Educational Networked Improvement Community Engelbart and working with Eileen Clegg on the writing of the book the Engelbart Hypothesis: Diaglogs with Douglas Engelbart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPnsWKikS_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPnsWKikS_w

DonHopkins 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122591 DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] I'll write a blog post about it soon, but I was hoping to benefit from other people's comments and links from discussing it here first. (You could accuse me of "crowd sourcing" my blog post, but I'd like to think of it as applying collective intelligence! ;) ) "The key thing about all the world's big problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we don't get collectively smarter, we're doomed." -Douglass Engelbart, Intelligence in the Internet Age, New York Times, 9/19/05 https://collectiveiq.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/great-doug-engelbart-quotes/ https://collectiveiq.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/great-doug-eng... Or as the great philosopher Linda Richman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw&feature=youtu.be&t=5m28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw&feature=youtu.be... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121632 DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [–] Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA Q: Some people will have to change their normal method of thinking? A: I think today, Aday really summed it up, that one of the things about collective intelligence means that we really have to start looking at ways that we can collectively share knowledge. And one of the problems with that is there are no good tools for sharing massive quantities of knowledge. So it's very hard to stay on top of things. So Doug's methodology creates maps and new ways of displaying data that we have not explored. So that we can really see large amounts of data, large amounts of knowledge, put them into structured arguments, so what he means by structure -- and maps, so that people can literally see what exists now and create very rapidly stragies -- both long term strategic planning, as well as tactical planning -- to address the issues that are confronting us. Q: Does this assume that if people have the same information they'll all come to the same conclusions? A: No, not at all. What it means that you will be able to look at data and make intelligent conclusions based on the best data we have currently. Because right now there is a lot of good data that is currently not available to the people who are making the decisions. He was saying that this was a dynamic knowledge repository and it was about allowing people to have an intelligence quotient. In other words, he saud that the infrastructure that you have to support a society determines the capability of that society. Just because we have all these capable tools doesn't necessarily mean that we'll behave intelligently, but it does allow us the chance to behave intelligently. So by improving our infrastructure, we're improving our intelligence QUOTIENT, not our actual intelligence. Just like the same people who are intelligent sometimes make bad choices, even though they're capable of making a better choice. Q: Now you say that Doug was interested in solving the most urgent problems of humanity. What type of problems was he referring to? A: He was definitely referring to things like Global Warming, issues around water, food, hunger, war, corruption was very high on Doug's list. He also followed very closely the work of the Millinenium Project, and so often times he would cite whatever they had cited. He would often cite those same issues. Q: Do you think his vision was going to become a reality at some point? A: I think yes, if I didn't I don't think I would have spend the last 30 years following it. Q: What did you find most impressive about him as a person? A: His humility. He was such a humble man, and his steadfastness of keeping his vision. Often times leaders like Doug, who many people call a prophet... In our society, we tend to think of the leaders as these sort of charismatic, ambitious people, and I think that Doug really broke that mold, in that he was a very humble, really shy person. Q: Do you have any last minute comments or observations about him to finish up. Or a good anecdote? A: I think -- I wanted to say one thing that Doug told me many years ago. And this is really for the software developers out there. Once, this was in the 90's. And I said, Doug, Doug, I'm just started to get involved with software development, and we have this really cool tool we're working on. Do you have any advice, about ... for a young software developer. He looked at me and said: "Yes. Make sure that whatever you do is very modular. Make everything as module as possible. Because you know that some of your ideas are going to endure, and some are not. The problem is you don't know which one will, and which one won't. So you want to be able to separate the pieces so that those pieces can carry on and move forward."

DonHopkins 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17122591 DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] I'll write a blog post about it soon, but I was hoping to benefit from other people's comments and links from discussing it here first. (You could accuse me of "crowd sourcing" my blog post, but I'd like to think of it as applying collective intelligence! ;) ) "The key thing about all the world's big problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we don't get collectively smarter, we're doomed." -Douglass Engelbart, Intelligence in the Internet Age, New York Times, 9/19/05 https://collectiveiq.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/great-doug-engelbart-quotes/ https://collectiveiq.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/great-doug-eng... Or as the great philosopher Linda Richman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw&feature=youtu.be&t=5m28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJkANps0Qw&feature=youtu.be... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17121632 DonHopkins on May 21, 2018 | prev | next [–] Valerie Landau interviewed by Martin Wasserman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ig8ecXlrA Q: Some people will have to change their normal method of thinking? A: I think today, Aday really summed it up, that one of the things about collective intelligence means that we really have to start looking at ways that we can collectively share knowledge. And one of the problems with that is there are no good tools for sharing massive quantities of knowledge. So it's very hard to stay on top of things. So Doug's methodology creates maps and new ways of displaying data that we have not explored. So that we can really see large amounts of data, large amounts of knowledge, put them into structured arguments, so what he means by structure -- and maps, so that people can literally see what exists now and create very rapidly stragies -- both long term strategic planning, as well as tactical planning -- to address the issues that are confronting us. Q: Does this assume that if people have the same information they'll all come to the same conclusions? A: No, not at all. What it means that you will be able to look at data and make intelligent conclusions based on the best data we have currently. Because right now there is a lot of good data that is currently not available to the people who are making the decisions. He was saying that this was a dynamic knowledge repository and it was about allowing people to have an intelligence quotient. In other words, he saud that the infrastructure that you have to support a society determines the capability of that society. Just because we have all these capable tools doesn't necessarily mean that we'll behave intelligently, but it does allow us the chance to behave intelligently. So by improving our infrastructure, we're improving our intelligence QUOTIENT, not our actual intelligence. Just like the same people who are intelligent sometimes make bad choices, even though they're capable of making a better choice. Q: Now you say that Doug was interested in solving the most urgent problems of humanity. What type of problems was he referring to? A: He was definitely referring to things like Global Warming, issues around water, food, hunger, war, corruption was very high on Doug's list. He also followed very closely the work of the Millinenium Project, and so often times he would cite whatever they had cited. He would often cite those same issues. Q: Do you think his vision was going to become a reality at some point? A: I think yes, if I didn't I don't think I would have spend the last 30 years following it. Q: What did you find most impressive about him as a person? A: His humility. He was such a humble man, and his steadfastness of keeping his vision. Often times leaders like Doug, who many people call a prophet... In our society, we tend to think of the leaders as these sort of charismatic, ambitious people, and I think that Doug really broke that mold, in that he was a very humble, really shy person. Q: Do you have any last minute comments or observations about him to finish up. Or a good anecdote? A: I think -- I wanted to say one thing that Doug told me many years ago. And this is really for the software developers out there. Once, this was in the 90's. And I said, Doug, Doug, I'm just started to get involved with software development, and we have this really cool tool we're working on. Do you have any advice, about ... for a young software developer. He looked at me and said: "Yes. Make sure that whatever you do is very modular. Make everything as module as possible. Because you know that some of your ideas are going to endure, and some are not. The problem is you don't know which one will, and which one won't. So you want to be able to separate the pieces so that those pieces can carry on and move forward."