Talk:Douglas Engelbart

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This article has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2005 press source article for details. The citation is in: "Apple's Mighty Mouse: What Were They Thinking?" (2005-08-03). Low End Mac. [1].

Contents 1 Why that weird stuff had to go 2 Spelling 3 Good tone edits that could also help the Vannevar Bush article 4 Corrected YUri Rubinsky Award date

[edit] Why that weird stuff had to go

Some anon IP user put in a weird, weird, paragraph that I have taken out. It was as follows:

Engelbart has repeatedly said that no one recalls who coined the term the "mouse" -- nor why. The "tail" remains speculation. He also stated at an SRI banquet following his National Technology Award that Bill English deserved equal credit, but that Stanford Research Institute chose/needed to register the patent in one name, and chose his. Thierry Bardini is a thorough researcher and fine writer, but never worked with Engelbart. To say Engelbart was "strongly influenced" by anything after the age of 15 is dubious; he has always been a thinker, but not a great reader or listener.

I have no idea where this person is coming from with these crazy ideas, especially the last one. If he or she had actually bothered to read almost everything published by Engelbart (I have), they would have realized that Engelbart was strongly influenced first by Bush, Whorf, and Licklider (all three of whom were cited and discussed in Engelbart's seminal 1962 paper, which has been posted on several Web sites). Furthermore, Engelbart's writings after 1970 began to borrow a lot of ideas from Peter Drucker (particularly the "knowledge worker" concept), and Engelbart explicitly acknowledged as much in his published writings at the time as well as in the 1986 interview with the two Stanford librarians (which is also on the Web somewhere).

If that person actually has personal knowledge of Engelbart (for example, as a former SRI or Tymshare employee), that would be great. But otherwise, Wikipedia's NPOV policy requires that articles stick to what's generally available about someone in the published literature. Even if Engelbart's own writings somehow misrepresent who has influenced him and how, this article should not imply such a wild claim unless and until it can be substantiated. --Coolcaesar 00:57, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Even if the author had personal info, wikipedia is not for first hand research.

70.248.186.8 01:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

It's Douglas Englebart, not Engelbart

Uh, dude, if you actually review the documents on file in Special Collections at Stanford University (I've been there three times), the guy clearly signs his name Douglas Engelbart. I think we can safely assume that he knows how to spell his own name. Also, the vast majority of articles ever published about him (and I personally have most of them on file) give his name as Douglas Engelbart. --Coolcaesar 02:57, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Doug says (when reminding people to spell his name with Engel, not Engle: "My last name is German - from the Angels, not the Angles". --Grlloyd

[edit] Good tone edits that could also help the Vannevar Bush article

I completely agree with Coolcaesar. BTW I think this is a very well written article now. Perhaps someone who is interested in Engelbart and his interests might also be interested in having a look at the related Vannevar Bush article and hammering it closer to NPOV. That article is not horrible, but it does have a couple wingy paragraphs in it such as the one that Coolcaesar has corrected here. --Threepd 15:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Corrected YUri Rubinsky Award date

Doug received the award from Yuri in 1995 at the 4th WWw Conference in Boston. I was there as a co-worker of Yuri.

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( I Lack wikimedia skills to put a big (5) here If we are going to link Engelbart to co-evolution, can there be some relevent description at either end? Perhaps, (on thi page) a discussion of technosynthetic, not "typical" cooevolution. hence it appearing undifined and (seemingly) irrelevant , if one clicks through to the co-ev page?:thanks--Choz 08:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC).