Douglas Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution
– Digital technology could help make this a better world. But we've also got to change our way of thinking.
We like to begin by telling the story of Douglas Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution, because this story is emblematic of knowledge federation. The story is about how the Silicon Valley and the Stanford University failed to understand and even hear their genius in residence – even after having recognized him as such. Knowledge federation may be understood as an initiative to continue and complete this "unfinished revolution".
So here it is, in a nutshell: Having decided, in December of 1950, to direct his career so as to maximize its benefits to mankind, Doug Engelbart thought for three months about a career line that could achieve that. Then he had an epiphany...
In the late 1990s it was generally understood that the now common networked and interactive media technology, and the familiar user interface with the mouse and the windows, were not developed by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, or even by XEROX where they found it, but by Doug Engelbart and his SRI-based "Laboratory for Increasing Human Intelligence" during the 1960-s. Doug subsequently received all imaginable honors that an inventor could receive – and yet died feeling he had failed.
There are a number of reason why the story of Douglas Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution is important – and when you begin to see them, you'll rush to click the link and then take all the time it takes to process it slowly. Here is one of them: By showing just how much the current-paradigm or (allow me to say) old-paradigm leaders are stuck in the paradigm and unable to see beyond it, this story points to an opportunity for smaller yet braver protagonists to take the lead.
