>that still misses the fact that the world failed to develop those possibilities in any meaningful way
I don't know about that. I'm frequently engaged in realtime collaborative editing of rich, interactive datasets with people on the other side of the planet. The specific mechanisms Engelbart pioneered underlie most of that infrastructure.
In under 50 years, we've progressed from the relatively abstract methods he developed, to actually seeing systems developed on those principles in the wild, in frequent use by literally billions of people.
I think you do a disservice to all of those who have helped to bring this about by discarding their work as "myopic".
i'm sorry if you feel personally offended, but
if you think that today's computers (which are
thousands of times more powerful than the ones
that engelbart was working with) are -- to use
his phrase -- "augmenting human intellect", then
i would certainly like to have you tell me how.
because i see society using these supercomputers
to exchange pictures with their high-school chums
on facebook, and instagram photos of their lunch.
and (let us not forget) to _track_ those people,
so we know the best advertisements to serve up.
all of which might be acceptable trade-offs _if_
we were also augmenting human intellect as well.
but we're not.
so it certainly appears to me that the only things
we are "augmenting" is our stupidity and our greed.
and if you bring this to the attention of anyone,
they'll turn the blame on you for "being negative".
> if you think that today's computers are ... "augmenting human intellect", then i would certainly like to have you tell me how.
Isn't it obvious? I have immediate access, in almost every physical location, to a data store which, while not quite the sum total of human knowledge, is pretty close to it. It's meticulously organised, indexed, hyperlinked, and easy-to-use.
The fact that many people (including me) use this for social interaction too does not detract from that at all.
You are essentially writing off the entire Web as nothing more than Facebook, Instagram and Google Adsense.
i'm saying we have failed to actualize a very huge potential.
and oh yeah, sure, we've taken some 49 steps on the journey.
(and 27 of 'em actually moved society forward! imagine that!)
and we could pat ourselves on the back for our "progress"...
but that ignores the fact that the journey is a thousand miles.
nor do we seem to realize that the journey has become a race,
a race against time, because the greed and stupidity that i
talked about above is turning our planet into a place that
will all-too-soon become one on which humans can not survive.
(shortly after all the other large mammals on it go extinct.)
so, like, dude, enjoy your "social interaction" while you can.
I don't know about that. I'm frequently engaged in realtime collaborative editing of rich, interactive datasets with people on the other side of the planet. The specific mechanisms Engelbart pioneered underlie most of that infrastructure.
In under 50 years, we've progressed from the relatively abstract methods he developed, to actually seeing systems developed on those principles in the wild, in frequent use by literally billions of people.
I think you do a disservice to all of those who have helped to bring this about by discarding their work as "myopic".