Blog Post 2

Abstract

In this blog post I will discuss the work of Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues (Ted Nelson being one of the more prominent colleagues) that were the first people to implement augmented reality into the daily lives of everyone who has access to a computer and the internet. I have done research across multiple sources to have a more informed view on the work of Douglas Engelbart.

Introduction

Douglas Engelbart was an American inventor and engineer who focused his career on making the world a better place with the aid of organized effort (Avram, 2020). He believed that with a computer and more importantly the digital world on a computer we could further our mental capabilities and collectively make a significant change to our daily lives. Engelbart is an Internet pioneer and without his and his colleagues’ work we may not have the internet or several years behind where we are now.

Literature review

It is always interesting to examine how such monumental inventions are created as no one has ever done this before so why did Engelbart take on this project? Engelbart states that he “became motivated in 1951 to improving mankind’s capability for dealing with its pressing problems” (Engelbart, 1995). Engelbart believes that he, with the help of the World-Wide-Web has opened people’s eyes to hypermedia’s potential (Engelbart 1995) allowing people to approach text in a much broader way with a lot more possibilities.

As mentioned in a YouTube video uploaded by the Doug Engelbart Institute, Engelbart created a computer that was interactive, connected, graphical and personal. He was fascinated by the ideas of Vannevar Bush which gave him a foundation to work his ideas on. Engelbart used the ideas inside the previously mentioned article by Bush to turn his vision into a reality. His famous presentation knowns as The Mother of All Demos (which can be watched here) showed off the advances he made in computing, including the first computer mouse, hyperlinks, online collaboration, to name just a few.

Engelbart never had the intention of having a computer replacing or automating a humans solution to a problem but to increase the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain compensation to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems (Engelbart, 2001). He knew that a computer could not solve our problems, but he wanted to create a way to make problem solving quicker, better, and possible.

Conclusions

It is quite clear that Douglas Engelbart has had a significant impact on how we work with computers. He gave computers a whole new ability to solve the problems that a person may struggle with or may not solve at all, the computer became an extension of the mind. Engelbart declared that if we work collaboratively instead of individually, we can boost our collective IQ and accomplish outstanding things. He also believed that his work was not the complete result, he wanted others to build upon his ideas and improve the way how people interact with a computer and the internet.

References

Avram, G. (2020) ‘Lecture 7 - Augmenting the Human Intellect – Doug Engelbart’, available: https://sulis.ul.ie/portal/site/04b03a54-230e-47f3-8bdb-77a88d3b2e3d/tool/5c397cf9-5862-4bfa-b5c1-6c8b9c4b1fc8/ShowPage?returnView=&studentItemId=0&backPath=&bltiAppStores=false&errorMessage=&messageId=&clearAttr=&source=&title=&sendingPage=121862&newTopLevel=false&postedComment=false&itemId=736179&addBefore=&path=push&topicId=&addTool=-1&recheck=&id=&forumId= [accessed 19 Nov 2020].

Douglas C. Engelbart (1995) – Toward augmenting the human intellect and boosting our collect IQ, available: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/208344.208352, [accessed 22 Nov 2020].

Douglas Engelbart (2001) Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, available: http://www.carolinebrooks.org/002-Notes/Research%20Template%20-%20Augmenting%20Human%20Intellect%20-%20A%20Conceptual%20Framework%20by%20Engelbart%202001.pdf [ accessed 19 Nov 2020].

Doug Engelbart Institute (2014) ‘Doug Engelbart– A New Paradigm for Humanity’s Collective IQ’, available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdFejSdS9fs [accessed 22 Nov 2020].