Douglas Engelbart
Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart is best known for inventing the computer mouse. And as a pioneer of human-computer interaction who in addition was part of a team who developed hypertext, networked computers and precursors to GUI’s. He relates his first knowledge and interest to Vannevar Bush’s article
“As we may think”. Engleburt reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies. He decided to set himself the task of improving and developing computer-based technologies for manipulating information directly. This, with a lot left out and major skimming, is why and how the mouse was born. (Have read some interesting articles on how the knee might also be used, more a kind of leaver, which would leave the hands free to carry out other tasks using the keyboard) The mouse was and is primarily the whole tool behind interaction. Without the mouse we are left stationary, unable to move in different realms apart from up, down, across. He came into criticism later on, with his view of computers and their role being just for large corporations, business, and much less for general use, as well as he general theories and use of the computer.
“The way we had been thinking about it was sort of Doug Englebart's view that the mainframe was like a railroad, owned by an institution that decided what you could do and when you could do it. Englebart was trying to be like Henry Ford. A personal computer as it was thought of in the sixties was like an automobile.”
Ryan, Bob “Dynabook Revisited with Alan Kay” 1991
Ted Nelson
Theorist, philosopher, invented the term “hypertext” (debatable, H.G Wells might contest that, as well as Bush’s ideas (1945) of which has been said Nelson simply re-literates) in 1965 he also coined the words hypermedia, transclusion, virtuality, interwingularity (!) and teledildonics. His main object and incentive is to make computers accessible to ordinary people. (While I’m here Interwingularity, anyone who makes up a word like that, I like.)
In the context of interactivity it would appear that he was instrumental in its thought and birth so to speak. First coming up with the idea, what would then become project Xanadu: a word processor capable of storing multiple versions, and displaying the differences between these versions. This led to Nelson wishing to facilitate “nonsequential writing”, where the user could choose their own paths through an electronic document. Not a new idea, one could relate that back to the 16th century, especially looking at the way in which they tried to organize information within libraries, which failed due to its complexity, but a new concept in the digital age where anything is relatively possible. He called this new idea “Zippered lists”. These zippered lists would allow compound documents to be formed from pieces of other documents, an idea he would later refer to as transclusion.
One could argue that is wasn’t until Tim Berners-Lee (and Robert Cailliau) actually invented the internet that any of this became relevant, although Nelson is dismayed by the World Wide Web, believing it to be a “gross over-Simplication of his own work” and believes
“HTML is precisely what we were trying to prevent- ever breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can’t follow to their origins, no version management, and no rights management”
Everyone can’t but agree with this statement, some might say it is blindingly obvious when it is pointed out. But how, is a lot harder to answer. Project Xanadu as I mentioned previously is where Nelsons ideas “live” Many of Nelson’s ideas although very good ideas in theory have their problems. Complexity vs. Simplicity; project Xanadu allows documents to contain any part of any other document, whereas the web merely allows linking to complete documents. There is the fact that the web is compatible with existing file systems, transclusion would need an entire new system requiring the use of complicated databases, which may be difficult to maintain being that the web is ever expanding and growing. Then there is copyright, Xanadu’s model of transclusion has proven unpopular with authors and consumers. Despite the facilities for authors of documents to be paid when part of their work was transcluded into another, there is no guarantee that the authors of these documents would receive proper credit in the transcluding work. Then there is the point of making us pay for everything, I don’t like the sound of that…… All in all it would seem he is prolific in the expansion of the World Wide Web and where we are heading. Whether his ideas ever get fully materialised or used in part, is yet to be seen or made possible.
Alan Kay "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
An American computer scientist, who joined Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research center (PARC) in 1970. Here he helped develop network workstations, and by some, the creator of the modern graphical user interface. And most famously came up with the Dynabook, the concept which defined the basis of the laptop computer.
Yet even before his years at Xerox PARC, Kay had envisioned the Dynabook, which he described as "a portable interactive personal computer, as accessible as a book." The Dynabook would be linked to a network and offer users the ability to use text, visuals, animation and audio.
“Just as the book was an extension of the oral medium, so is the computer an extension of the print medium.”
Kay drew an initial pen and ink sketch of this device, which is widely considered the prototype for the notebook computer. Today, most portable computers contain all the technology his vision would require, yet Kay has insisted in his talks and writings that the Dynabook “remains a dream”. Not yet made or even properly imagined."
He is currently in the process of writing a new computer language that constructed simulated intelligence within the computer so as to allow the machine to tell itself what to do. He envisions a “computer that can learn from the user and adapt to the user's needs.” Should be interesting…….
