Some of you may never have heard about this man before, but Douglas Engelbart had enormous influence on how we use our computers today. He visioned, and later together with his team of engineers, created and tested some of the core ways we interact with computers today. Without his unique strategy towards solving how to use computers at the workplace a lot of things we take for granted today would never have been created.

There are some gotchas though. His visions for multi-user collaboration was even more advanced than what we have today. His ideas for a workplace was more structured than many of the messy flat structures of today.

His name is mentioned in most large newspapers this week, but I saw a version of his demo back when I attended university in the early 1990’s and was stunned by his grasp of what computers combined with a network and software could bring to our society and workplaces.

A great man is gone, but his demo from 1968 still hints to ways we could work better together. Both Apple and Microsoft has used his visions for creating their world empires. We are in his debt everyday when we use our computers.

xkcd honours Engelbart in his way.

I did it my way with this little blog entry.

Update:
Another tribute: Joy of Tech