Ted Nelson's Passionate Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart 110
theodp writes "Speaking at a memorial event for the legendary Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum, Ted Nelson was pissed-with-a-capital-P. Nelson in effect gave two powerful eulogies — one for his friend Dr. Engelbart, who left this Earth in July, and a second for Engelbart's career, which essentially began 'dying' four decades earlier due to short-sighted organizations' failure to fund the brilliant guy who gave the world The Mother of All Demos in 1968. 'Let us never forget that Doug Engelbart was dumped by ARPA,' Nelson laments. 'Doug Engelbart was dumped by SRI, Doug Engelbart was snubbed by Xerox PARC, and for the rest of his working life he had no chance to take us further...Just as we can only guess what John Kennedy might have done, we can only guess what Doug Engelbart might have done had he not been cut down in his prime.' It's a very moving and passionate speech (despite some oddly inappropriate audience laughter). And, alas, a very sad one in a world that throws $4 billion at the likes of Snapchat and Pinterest."
Re:In the minds of the curren tech industry (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah but Snapchat and Pinterest are hip, young and agile,
Don't forget they're social and cloud, with lashings of NOSQL. And at least web 3.0. Or are we up to 4.0? yet. I'm still stuck on web 2.1.6-RC4.
At least that's what goes through the mind of the current tech industry.
They probably use all the latest fads [coboloncogs.org] as well, too.
Happened to me (Score:3, Funny)
a great talent being denied the chance to continue his life's work:
Happened to me ... i could have been such a good beer taster
Re:In the minds of the curren tech industry (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In the minds of the curren tech industry (Score:4, Funny)
Me too!