It all started earlier this afternoon when Buzz Bruggeman asked me in an email “want to have dinner with Douglas Engelbart?”
First of all, if you don’t know who Douglas Engelbart is you better do some reading. He invented the mouse and many of the concepts that you are now using to read my words. And he did that 40 years ago. Yes, he was that far ahead.
Oh, Buzz, do you have to ask?
Anyway, turned out he had been talking with Bill Daul, one of Doug’s friends and they quickly arranged a dinner. Six people in total. Andy Ruff, program manager on Microsoft’s Entourage team. Buzz. Doug’s friend Bill. I had a previously arranged dinner with Joseph Jaffe, so I invited him along.
What an incredible dinner. The five of us hung on every word Doug spoke. The conversation was interesting and diverse.
I filmed part of it but the restaurant was so noisy that that probably won’t be very useful.
Some key things stuck with me.
1) Doug is a frustrated inventor. He was frustrated over and over again during his career by people who just didn’t get his ideas. 2) He says he has many ideas that he hasn’t shared yet. We talked about the way the system could change from how it sees what you’re paying attention to, for instance. 3) He repeated for us the creation of the mouse. Said they still don’t know who came up with the name “mouse.” That was the part of the dinner I filmed. 4) He challenged the business people at the table (specifically looking at Andy and me) to come up with a way to increase the speed that innovations get used. He didn’t say it, but his eyes told me that taking 25 years for the world to get the mouse was too long and his career would have been a lot more interesting if people could have gotten his ideas quicker. I told him that ideas move around the world a lot faster now due to blogs and video (imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text).
It was an incredible evening. One that I just can’t do justice to by writing on my blog. I got to say thank you to a real visionary who plowed forward even after everyone had told him he was nuts.
I handed him a pre-release copy of our book, wrote in the front “thank you for inventing the world that made all of this possible” and gave him the mouse that I used. Hey, he gave all of us mice, seemed to be the least I could do.
But peering into the eyes of the creator I realized something. He’s also the best evangelist I’ve ever met. He can draw pictures and inspire in a way that few people can. And, this 80-year-old can run intellectual circles around most 25-year-olds I’ve met (and certainly runs circles around me). He’s an amazing person and certainly an American treasure.
I give you a front-row seat on the future. Focusing most of my efforts now on next-generation augmented reality and artificial intelligence, AKA "mixed reality."
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BUY OUR NEW BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Transformation-Robert-Scoble/dp/1539894444 "The Fourth Transformation: How augmented reality and artificial intelligence will change everything."
WATCH MY LATEST SPEECHES:
State of VR with Philip Rosedale (done in VR itself, very cool): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zAA1EVGUZU
At GEOINT, June 2017: http://trajectorymagazine.com/glimpse-new-world/
Augmented World Expo, June 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xHILvLD8E
At Leade.rs, April 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI
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BIO:
Scoble gives you a front-row seat on the future.
Literally. He had the first ride in the first Tesla. Siri was launched in his house. He's been the first to share all sorts of technologies and companies with you, from Flipboard to Pandora to Instagram.
Today he's focusing on mixed reality, AKA "next-generation augmented reality" which will include a new user interface for EVERYTHING in your life (IoT, Smart Cities, driverless cars, robots, drones, etc).
That's based on his view thanks to his past experience as futurist at Rackspace.
Best place to find Scoble? On his Facebook profile at https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble
He has been a technology blogger since 2000, was one of five people who built Microsoft's Channel 9 video blog/community, worked at Fast Company Magazine running its TV efforts, and has been part of technology media businesses since 1993.
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SPEAKER PITCH:
Apple and Facebook now have revealed their Augmented Reality strategies, which means your business needs one too. Rely on Robert Scoble, the world's top authority on AR, to bring to your conference what businesses should do next.
SPEECH ABSTRACT #1:
TITLE: The Fourth Transformation: What's next in mixed reality (AR and AI) and the future of technology?
Here's an example of this talk at Leade.rs in Paris in April, 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI
Why "the Fourth Transformation?"
Soon we will have phones and glasses that do full on augmented reality. Everything you look at will potentially be augmented. This world is coming in late 2017 with a new iPhone from Apple, amongst other products. Microsoft is betting everything on its HoloLens glasses that do mixed reality and the industry is spending many billions of dollars in R&D and funding new companies like Magic Leap.
This future will be the user interface for IoT, Smart Cities, autonomous cars, robots, drones, and your TV.
This is a big deal and Robert will take you through what mixed reality is and how it will change every business.
Learn more about Robert's speaking style and contact his agent at http://odemanagement.com/robert-scoble/Robert-Scoble.html
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SPEECH ABSTRACT #2:
"The Next Two Clicks of Moore's Law."
Over the next four years, or two clicks of Moore's Law, a ton about our technology world will change. Scoble will bring you the best from his travels visiting R&D labs, startups, and innovators around the world.
He views the world through his rose-colored-mixed-reality glasses, which will be the new user interface for self driving cars, Smart Cities, IoT, and many other things in our world.
He'll send you off with some lessons for companies both large and small.
++++++++
SPEECH ABSTRACT #3:
"Personalized Meaning: What is Augmented Reality For?"
As we enter a far more technological world where even cars drive themselves, I predict we'll see a blowback toward the analog, more authentic world.
What role does augmented reality play in both worlds?
Get Scoble's insight into where augmented reality is going, see tons of real-world demos, and understand what he means by 'personalized meaning.'
CONTACT:
If you are looking to contact me, email is best: scobleizer@gmail.com.
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ENDORSEMENTS:
IZEA Top 25 Tech Influencers: https://izea.com/2017/07/07/25-top-tech-influencers/
Time: One of the top 140 Twitterers!
FT: One of the five most influential Twitterers!
Inc. Top 5 on list of Tech Power Players You Need to Know: http://www.inc.com/john-rampton/30-power-players-in-tech-you-need-to-know.html
Next Reality: #4 on top 50 AR influencer list: https://next.reality.news/news/nr50-next-realitys-50-people-watch-augmented-mixed-reality-0177454/
View all posts by Robert Scoble
Published
71 thoughts on “#29: I gave Douglas Engelbart a mouse and a book”
Philipp: I have to see if I can improve the audio quality. It really is hard to hear, Doug is very soft spoken and the restaurant was very noisy. I’m going to try to get it up on Channel 9.
Alex: you have no idea. My life is surreal. I’m getting to meet people who are simply national treasures. I don’t know how to put it any other way.
Philipp: I have to see if I can improve the audio quality. It really is hard to hear, Doug is very soft spoken and the restaurant was very noisy. I’m going to try to get it up on Channel 9.
Alex: you have no idea. My life is surreal. I’m getting to meet people who are simply national treasures. I don’t know how to put it any other way.
Scoble said “imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text”.
Words can be much more immersive than pictures. Pictures are much easier to spank out than words, especially if you are an analphabet and you run Windows.
Scoble said “imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text”.
Words can be much more immersive than pictures. Pictures are much easier to spank out than words, especially if you are an analphabet and you run Windows.
Robert…you confuse communication with invention. We can talk to each other so much faster, but we say so much less of value. You think “If a million people are talking, what wonderous ideas we’ll have”. But that’s just a committee.
Look at MS. They have 61,000 employees, and their last few major announcements have all REEKED of “Follow someone else”. Invention happens when someone gets annoyed enough by a problem to fix it. Just like nine women can’t have a baby in a month, throwing more people at a problem can’t solve it any faster. MS is simply too big, and if the rumors of 8000+ coders out of 61,000 employees is true, well, it would explain much.
Robert…you confuse communication with invention. We can talk to each other so much faster, but we say so much less of value. You think “If a million people are talking, what wonderous ideas we’ll have”. But that’s just a committee.
Look at MS. They have 61,000 employees, and their last few major announcements have all REEKED of “Follow someone else”. Invention happens when someone gets annoyed enough by a problem to fix it. Just like nine women can’t have a baby in a month, throwing more people at a problem can’t solve it any faster. MS is simply too big, and if the rumors of 8000+ coders out of 61,000 employees is true, well, it would explain much.
can’t really say that the number of employees vs innovation argument is valid…look at the breadth of areas in which Microsoft operates…I recently read an article that graphically represented all areas MS had a presence in and the major competitors in that area…and the picture wasn’t pretty…
you can’t really innovate in all areas all the time…see how the innovation cycle is slowing down for Google…it’ll happen as they expand into many areas and their employee base increases at the same time…
can’t really say that the number of employees vs innovation argument is valid…look at the breadth of areas in which Microsoft operates…I recently read an article that graphically represented all areas MS had a presence in and the major competitors in that area…and the picture wasn’t pretty…
you can’t really innovate in all areas all the time…see how the innovation cycle is slowing down for Google…it’ll happen as they expand into many areas and their employee base increases at the same time…
Why does Microsoft focus so much on hiring 25 year olds if the experienced carry fantastic intellectual capital?
I believe he was not only looking at you to speed up the innovation to realization process, he was indicting you. The 800 lb gorilla likes the status quo – a lot.
Why does Microsoft focus so much on hiring 25 year olds if the experienced carry fantastic intellectual capital?
I believe he was not only looking at you to speed up the innovation to realization process, he was indicting you. The 800 lb gorilla likes the status quo – a lot.
Well, I have to say I envy you, form the first time I read about this amazing guy I imagine how wonderfull would be to met him and have a chat.
Well You are a lucky fellow!!!
I hope i got the chance to meet him some day to..
VJS
Well, I have to say I envy you, form the first time I read about this amazing guy I imagine how wonderfull would be to met him and have a chat.
Well You are a lucky fellow!!!
I hope i got the chance to meet him some day to..
VJS
You should have given Doug a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”. Even today, it still takes too long for innovations to make it into the mainstream. Ethernet, SQL, object oriented languages running on garbage collected VMs, etc are all decades old but only started really affecting the mainstream in the last decade. AJAX which is all the rage this year was invented last century. Dave Winer first started talking about payloads for RSS in 2001 but podcasting only took off over the past year.
We are closing the gap from innovation to adoption but it definitely could be better. I agree that blogs and other forms of mass communication being available to the general public will only accelerate this trend.
You should have given Doug a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”. Even today, it still takes too long for innovations to make it into the mainstream. Ethernet, SQL, object oriented languages running on garbage collected VMs, etc are all decades old but only started really affecting the mainstream in the last decade. AJAX which is all the rage this year was invented last century. Dave Winer first started talking about payloads for RSS in 2001 but podcasting only took off over the past year.
We are closing the gap from innovation to adoption but it definitely could be better. I agree that blogs and other forms of mass communication being available to the general public will only accelerate this trend.
He challenged the business people at the table (specifically looking at Andy and me) to come up with a way to increase the speed that innovations get used.
You’re a businessman? Is blogging about anything that crosses your mind now considered “business”?
He challenged the business people at the table (specifically looking at Andy and me) to come up with a way to increase the speed that innovations get used.
You’re a businessman? Is blogging about anything that crosses your mind now considered “business”?
I did PR for SRI (agency side) from ’97-’02 and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Engelbart several times.
I have a number of stories of Dr. Engelbart, but what always struck me was his frustration that people were simply satisfied with his innovations from decades ago, forgetting that there is *so* much improvement to be made. “Sure, we’ve gone from here to here, but we have THIS FAR to go!” he once said in 2001, continuing with “That’s why I’m grey — I’m really only forty.”
Honestly, people’s tendency to tie Dr. Engelbart to the invention of the mouse (to the exclusion of almost everything else) is akin to reducing Edison’s entire ouevre to the light bulb.
Or… As one wag put it (paraphrasing): “I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas.”
I did PR for SRI (agency side) from ’97-’02 and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Engelbart several times.
I have a number of stories of Dr. Engelbart, but what always struck me was his frustration that people were simply satisfied with his innovations from decades ago, forgetting that there is *so* much improvement to be made. “Sure, we’ve gone from here to here, but we have THIS FAR to go!” he once said in 2001, continuing with “That’s why I’m grey — I’m really only forty.”
Honestly, people’s tendency to tie Dr. Engelbart to the invention of the mouse (to the exclusion of almost everything else) is akin to reducing Edison’s entire ouevre to the light bulb.
Or… As one wag put it (paraphrasing): “I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas.”
“I told him that ideas move around the world a lot faster now due to blogs and video (imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text).”
Eww, I hope you didn’t say that to the world’s expert on human interaction with computer devices.
I want to claim that Halo 2 is particularly special by acting as if we would have no way to fathom it if we were so crude as to perceive the world as ASCII.
Ignore the fact that we as humans and most creatures on earth usually have eyes and even the crudest visual perceptions are far superior the computer characters.
There’s certainly no way I could say: it looks like a 1st person landscape with fewer colors, more jagged and less real representation of objects, with all the curves or non-linear objects a bit more hard-edged or boxier….
No, prior to last year or even the advent of video (when was that? The 70s for computers?…) that could not be described at all except by a bunch of ASCII characters.
“I told him that ideas move around the world a lot faster now due to blogs and video (imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text).”
Eww, I hope you didn’t say that to the world’s expert on human interaction with computer devices.
I want to claim that Halo 2 is particularly special by acting as if we would have no way to fathom it if we were so crude as to perceive the world as ASCII.
Ignore the fact that we as humans and most creatures on earth usually have eyes and even the crudest visual perceptions are far superior the computer characters.
There’s certainly no way I could say: it looks like a 1st person landscape with fewer colors, more jagged and less real representation of objects, with all the curves or non-linear objects a bit more hard-edged or boxier….
No, prior to last year or even the advent of video (when was that? The 70s for computers?…) that could not be described at all except by a bunch of ASCII characters.
Robert, your blog got its mojo back with this series of posts. In the last month or so, it seemed like an extension to Channel 9. But, with the last few posts, its back to being a blog to read for good geek stuff.
Robert, your blog got its mojo back with this series of posts. In the last month or so, it seemed like an extension to Channel 9. But, with the last few posts, its back to being a blog to read for good geek stuff.
The question we must ask is: “Is Englebart that far ahead? Or is the industry (specifically Microsoft and Apple which dominate) that far behind?”
A similarly interesting talk is Alan Kay’s “Are we there yet?” He points out that the average computer today is still much too rigid and too difficult to use to create things, visualize things, and experiment.
If what you want to do doesn’t fit into one of the little “boxes” like MS Word, MS Excel, or MS powerpoint, then you’ll have to program, and programming today remains tremendously primative (C#, Java, and the current crop of languages are baby steps on the near end of a road that was paved long ago at PARC).
Of course, Windows is set in stone. The only way to do anything is to throw the whole mess out and begin again. (See http://opencroquet.org for some folks doing this). Microsoft will reach out and crush any effort to do this as they have much too much invested in buggy whips to allow internal combustion to gain a foothold.
The question we must ask is: “Is Englebart that far ahead? Or is the industry (specifically Microsoft and Apple which dominate) that far behind?”
A similarly interesting talk is Alan Kay’s “Are we there yet?” He points out that the average computer today is still much too rigid and too difficult to use to create things, visualize things, and experiment.
If what you want to do doesn’t fit into one of the little “boxes” like MS Word, MS Excel, or MS powerpoint, then you’ll have to program, and programming today remains tremendously primative (C#, Java, and the current crop of languages are baby steps on the near end of a road that was paved long ago at PARC).
Of course, Windows is set in stone. The only way to do anything is to throw the whole mess out and begin again. (See http://opencroquet.org for some folks doing this). Microsoft will reach out and crush any effort to do this as they have much too much invested in buggy whips to allow internal combustion to gain a foothold.
About the audio of the video, I’ve found I can pull out people’s voices if I run a low pass filter. People’s voices are usually in the higher treble area then the background sound. So by adjusting a filter that clips the bass sound you can better hear people talking in a crowd. I use Final Cut Pro. Let me know what you use and I’ll see if there’s any filter that may work.
About the audio of the video, I’ve found I can pull out people’s voices if I run a low pass filter. People’s voices are usually in the higher treble area then the background sound. So by adjusting a filter that clips the bass sound you can better hear people talking in a crowd. I use Final Cut Pro. Let me know what you use and I’ll see if there’s any filter that may work.
Robert, you are a lucky guy. You probably would have killed Buzz if he let you out on this. 😉
If I have to pick one flabbergasting moment of this year, it was seeing the video at reboot and thinking (like most of the people in the room): what the hell have they done the last 27 years? They had everything already there.
It leaves me with the question: What did they also invent we have not seen yet, and why have we not seen it?
Robert, you are a lucky guy. You probably would have killed Buzz if he let you out on this. 😉
If I have to pick one flabbergasting moment of this year, it was seeing the video at reboot and thinking (like most of the people in the room): what the hell have they done the last 27 years? They had everything already there.
It leaves me with the question: What did they also invent we have not seen yet, and why have we not seen it?
Thanks for pointing me in his direction. Right now I am reading his 1962 AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework. It is a terrific piece. And when you think this was written back then; it’s amazing!
Thanks for pointing me in his direction. Right now I am reading his 1962 AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework. It is a terrific piece. And when you think this was written back then; it’s amazing!
The “invention” part, is only but one factor, you also have to factor in a need and a market, the problem with geeks and techie utopians, is that they only ever recall the hits. Whole lotta vapor and whole lot of wasted money chasing ratholed dreams.
That being said, per Xerox PARC taken decades for things to impact. Even yet now, not much closer to Kay’s “Dynabook”, the Tablet being a poor substitute. Still legend’s like Butler W. Lampson and Chuck Thacker are some of MFST’s best employees. Just a darned shame MFST can’t milk it.
The “invention” part, is only but one factor, you also have to factor in a need and a market, the problem with geeks and techie utopians, is that they only ever recall the hits. Whole lotta vapor and whole lot of wasted money chasing ratholed dreams.
That being said, per Xerox PARC taken decades for things to impact. Even yet now, not much closer to Kay’s “Dynabook”, the Tablet being a poor substitute. Still legend’s like Butler W. Lampson and Chuck Thacker are some of MFST’s best employees. Just a darned shame MFST can’t milk it.
Some people are missing the point in comparing ASCII to the current state of the Web. Yes, you can describe anything in ASCII but you inevitably get a ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ effect. Everybody has a different image in their head when playing Zork. Which is fine if the originating medium is text.
But movies, comics, and video games are far more than text. The creator or creators are presenting not just a ‘super soldier in green armor’ but rather a very specific representation of what that guy looks like, how he sounds, how he moves, etc. A skillful writer may decribes these attributes well but it is not remotely the same experience.
Some things are better left to the reader’s imagination. I recall a long running SF series about a far future military officer in which different artists were used for most of the covers. (Some of the artwork was possibly created for other material and repurposed for these books.) Some of these had an interpretation of the character that was jarringly in disagreement with my own imagined version of the character. Some seemed pretty spot on. But all were valid based on the text and the clash with my aesthetics was as much my fault as theirs. I’d be interested to know which covers the author most favors.
Halo 2 is not just ideas on a page but also how they’re embodied by the running game. The quality of those visuals and other elements of the presentation are critical selling points of the product. Promoting that product on a text-only medium would be painful.
A great idea is only step one of innovation. It took decades for the set of ideas Engelbart presented in the 60’s to catch on because these were things to make computers usable by a far wider range of people. That didn’t avoid the issue of what the computers cost. It took many years before computers were even a common retail item and more before the machines possessed the level of power needed to bring Engelbart’s concept to a wide audience.
It isn’t just a matter of reaching consumers. It also means making the cost of entry low enough so developing around new ideas isn’t restricted to a small elite. The number of people creating video games exploded when there were affordable personal computers that allowed nearly anyone to learn how to program and have access to a platform where they could publish software without being in the business of manufacturing the platform. There is a huge difference between producing an arcade machine and a game that runs on a home computer. In 1979 all of the people in the world who had created a video game could hold a meeting in any big hotel ballroom. Just a few years later that number had increased by orders of magnitude. The difference? Millions of relatively cheap home computers.
Some people are missing the point in comparing ASCII to the current state of the Web. Yes, you can describe anything in ASCII but you inevitably get a ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ effect. Everybody has a different image in their head when playing Zork. Which is fine if the originating medium is text.
But movies, comics, and video games are far more than text. The creator or creators are presenting not just a ‘super soldier in green armor’ but rather a very specific representation of what that guy looks like, how he sounds, how he moves, etc. A skillful writer may decribes these attributes well but it is not remotely the same experience.
Some things are better left to the reader’s imagination. I recall a long running SF series about a far future military officer in which different artists were used for most of the covers. (Some of the artwork was possibly created for other material and repurposed for these books.) Some of these had an interpretation of the character that was jarringly in disagreement with my own imagined version of the character. Some seemed pretty spot on. But all were valid based on the text and the clash with my aesthetics was as much my fault as theirs. I’d be interested to know which covers the author most favors.
Halo 2 is not just ideas on a page but also how they’re embodied by the running game. The quality of those visuals and other elements of the presentation are critical selling points of the product. Promoting that product on a text-only medium would be painful.
A great idea is only step one of innovation. It took decades for the set of ideas Engelbart presented in the 60’s to catch on because these were things to make computers usable by a far wider range of people. That didn’t avoid the issue of what the computers cost. It took many years before computers were even a common retail item and more before the machines possessed the level of power needed to bring Engelbart’s concept to a wide audience.
It isn’t just a matter of reaching consumers. It also means making the cost of entry low enough so developing around new ideas isn’t restricted to a small elite. The number of people creating video games exploded when there were affordable personal computers that allowed nearly anyone to learn how to program and have access to a platform where they could publish software without being in the business of manufacturing the platform. There is a huge difference between producing an arcade machine and a game that runs on a home computer. In 1979 all of the people in the world who had created a video game could hold a meeting in any big hotel ballroom. Just a few years later that number had increased by orders of magnitude. The difference? Millions of relatively cheap home computers.
Will we see the video here?
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Will we see the video here?
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Wow, sounds like a fantastic evening. you luck b$#@^*rd!
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Wow, sounds like a fantastic evening. you luck b$#@^*rd!
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Philipp: I have to see if I can improve the audio quality. It really is hard to hear, Doug is very soft spoken and the restaurant was very noisy. I’m going to try to get it up on Channel 9.
Alex: you have no idea. My life is surreal. I’m getting to meet people who are simply national treasures. I don’t know how to put it any other way.
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Philipp: I have to see if I can improve the audio quality. It really is hard to hear, Doug is very soft spoken and the restaurant was very noisy. I’m going to try to get it up on Channel 9.
Alex: you have no idea. My life is surreal. I’m getting to meet people who are simply national treasures. I don’t know how to put it any other way.
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Don’t take it the wrong way, but I wonder why you limited such a great person’s contribution to America by stating ‘American treasure’.
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Don’t take it the wrong way, but I wonder why you limited such a great person’s contribution to America by stating ‘American treasure’.
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World treasure would have been more appropriate.
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World treasure would have been more appropriate.
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What “America” does not mean “World”? 😉
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What “America” does not mean “World”? 😉
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You gave him a *second-hand* mouse ?
And they say that scotsmen are cheap….!
So why doesnt MS hire him ? Sounds as if he’s just the man to breathe new life into the Vista corpse!
—* Bill
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You gave him a *second-hand* mouse ?
And they say that scotsmen are cheap….!
So why doesnt MS hire him ? Sounds as if he’s just the man to breathe new life into the Vista corpse!
—* Bill
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man ure lucky Scoble…damn lucky…
Wild Bill: he wouldn’t really joing MS, let alone any other org. now but MS would definitely benefit from his consulting…
Scoble: that post u deleted…i read the same thing on Motley Fool…i still don’t get why the post was taken down: http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2005/mft05111113.htm
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man ure lucky Scoble…damn lucky…
Wild Bill: he wouldn’t really joing MS, let alone any other org. now but MS would definitely benefit from his consulting…
Scoble: that post u deleted…i read the same thing on Motley Fool…i still don’t get why the post was taken down: http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2005/mft05111113.htm
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Scoble said “imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text”.
Words can be much more immersive than pictures. Pictures are much easier to spank out than words, especially if you are an analphabet and you run Windows.
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Scoble said “imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text”.
Words can be much more immersive than pictures. Pictures are much easier to spank out than words, especially if you are an analphabet and you run Windows.
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cool, you lucky guy, to bad GYM did not work out… 🙂
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cool, you lucky guy, to bad GYM did not work out… 🙂
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Robert…you confuse communication with invention. We can talk to each other so much faster, but we say so much less of value. You think “If a million people are talking, what wonderous ideas we’ll have”. But that’s just a committee.
Look at MS. They have 61,000 employees, and their last few major announcements have all REEKED of “Follow someone else”. Invention happens when someone gets annoyed enough by a problem to fix it. Just like nine women can’t have a baby in a month, throwing more people at a problem can’t solve it any faster. MS is simply too big, and if the rumors of 8000+ coders out of 61,000 employees is true, well, it would explain much.
LikeLike
Robert…you confuse communication with invention. We can talk to each other so much faster, but we say so much less of value. You think “If a million people are talking, what wonderous ideas we’ll have”. But that’s just a committee.
Look at MS. They have 61,000 employees, and their last few major announcements have all REEKED of “Follow someone else”. Invention happens when someone gets annoyed enough by a problem to fix it. Just like nine women can’t have a baby in a month, throwing more people at a problem can’t solve it any faster. MS is simply too big, and if the rumors of 8000+ coders out of 61,000 employees is true, well, it would explain much.
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can’t really say that the number of employees vs innovation argument is valid…look at the breadth of areas in which Microsoft operates…I recently read an article that graphically represented all areas MS had a presence in and the major competitors in that area…and the picture wasn’t pretty…
you can’t really innovate in all areas all the time…see how the innovation cycle is slowing down for Google…it’ll happen as they expand into many areas and their employee base increases at the same time…
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can’t really say that the number of employees vs innovation argument is valid…look at the breadth of areas in which Microsoft operates…I recently read an article that graphically represented all areas MS had a presence in and the major competitors in that area…and the picture wasn’t pretty…
you can’t really innovate in all areas all the time…see how the innovation cycle is slowing down for Google…it’ll happen as they expand into many areas and their employee base increases at the same time…
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Why does Microsoft focus so much on hiring 25 year olds if the experienced carry fantastic intellectual capital?
I believe he was not only looking at you to speed up the innovation to realization process, he was indicting you. The 800 lb gorilla likes the status quo – a lot.
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Why does Microsoft focus so much on hiring 25 year olds if the experienced carry fantastic intellectual capital?
I believe he was not only looking at you to speed up the innovation to realization process, he was indicting you. The 800 lb gorilla likes the status quo – a lot.
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Hey Robert,
Did you know Doug still is a volunteer at the Computer History Museum?
He’s an awesome guy to just sit and have a conversation with — I am so glad you had a chance to meet him!
Next time give him some cheese. Mice like cheese, ya know!
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Hey Robert,
Did you know Doug still is a volunteer at the Computer History Museum?
He’s an awesome guy to just sit and have a conversation with — I am so glad you had a chance to meet him!
Next time give him some cheese. Mice like cheese, ya know!
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Umm, hey, you mentioned Microsoft (“Andy Ruff, program manager on Microsoft’s Entourage team”). Still, 28 posts wasn’t bad.
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Umm, hey, you mentioned Microsoft (“Andy Ruff, program manager on Microsoft’s Entourage team”). Still, 28 posts wasn’t bad.
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Well, I have to say I envy you, form the first time I read about this amazing guy I imagine how wonderfull would be to met him and have a chat.
Well You are a lucky fellow!!!
I hope i got the chance to meet him some day to..
VJS
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Well, I have to say I envy you, form the first time I read about this amazing guy I imagine how wonderfull would be to met him and have a chat.
Well You are a lucky fellow!!!
I hope i got the chance to meet him some day to..
VJS
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Follow-up on #15 above on the “no-GYM” theme…Microsoft has a big presence in the Mouse business.
Nevertheless, cool post…thanks.
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Follow-up on #15 above on the “no-GYM” theme…Microsoft has a big presence in the Mouse business.
Nevertheless, cool post…thanks.
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You should have given Doug a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”. Even today, it still takes too long for innovations to make it into the mainstream. Ethernet, SQL, object oriented languages running on garbage collected VMs, etc are all decades old but only started really affecting the mainstream in the last decade. AJAX which is all the rage this year was invented last century. Dave Winer first started talking about payloads for RSS in 2001 but podcasting only took off over the past year.
We are closing the gap from innovation to adoption but it definitely could be better. I agree that blogs and other forms of mass communication being available to the general public will only accelerate this trend.
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You should have given Doug a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”. Even today, it still takes too long for innovations to make it into the mainstream. Ethernet, SQL, object oriented languages running on garbage collected VMs, etc are all decades old but only started really affecting the mainstream in the last decade. AJAX which is all the rage this year was invented last century. Dave Winer first started talking about payloads for RSS in 2001 but podcasting only took off over the past year.
We are closing the gap from innovation to adoption but it definitely could be better. I agree that blogs and other forms of mass communication being available to the general public will only accelerate this trend.
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He challenged the business people at the table (specifically looking at Andy and me) to come up with a way to increase the speed that innovations get used.
You’re a businessman? Is blogging about anything that crosses your mind now considered “business”?
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He challenged the business people at the table (specifically looking at Andy and me) to come up with a way to increase the speed that innovations get used.
You’re a businessman? Is blogging about anything that crosses your mind now considered “business”?
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You can find the RealVideo of Dr. Engelbart’s groundbreaking 1968 demonstration here, for which he quite deservedly received a standing ovation.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/
I did PR for SRI (agency side) from ’97-’02 and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Engelbart several times.
I have a number of stories of Dr. Engelbart, but what always struck me was his frustration that people were simply satisfied with his innovations from decades ago, forgetting that there is *so* much improvement to be made. “Sure, we’ve gone from here to here, but we have THIS FAR to go!” he once said in 2001, continuing with “That’s why I’m grey — I’m really only forty.”
Honestly, people’s tendency to tie Dr. Engelbart to the invention of the mouse (to the exclusion of almost everything else) is akin to reducing Edison’s entire ouevre to the light bulb.
Or… As one wag put it (paraphrasing): “I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas.”
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You can find the RealVideo of Dr. Engelbart’s groundbreaking 1968 demonstration here, for which he quite deservedly received a standing ovation.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/
I did PR for SRI (agency side) from ’97-’02 and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Engelbart several times.
I have a number of stories of Dr. Engelbart, but what always struck me was his frustration that people were simply satisfied with his innovations from decades ago, forgetting that there is *so* much improvement to be made. “Sure, we’ve gone from here to here, but we have THIS FAR to go!” he once said in 2001, continuing with “That’s why I’m grey — I’m really only forty.”
Honestly, people’s tendency to tie Dr. Engelbart to the invention of the mouse (to the exclusion of almost everything else) is akin to reducing Edison’s entire ouevre to the light bulb.
Or… As one wag put it (paraphrasing): “I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas.”
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“I told him that ideas move around the world a lot faster now due to blogs and video (imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text).”
Eww, I hope you didn’t say that to the world’s expert on human interaction with computer devices.
I want to claim that Halo 2 is particularly special by acting as if we would have no way to fathom it if we were so crude as to perceive the world as ASCII.
Ignore the fact that we as humans and most creatures on earth usually have eyes and even the crudest visual perceptions are far superior the computer characters.
There’s certainly no way I could say: it looks like a 1st person landscape with fewer colors, more jagged and less real representation of objects, with all the curves or non-linear objects a bit more hard-edged or boxier….
No, prior to last year or even the advent of video (when was that? The 70s for computers?…) that could not be described at all except by a bunch of ASCII characters.
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“I told him that ideas move around the world a lot faster now due to blogs and video (imagine trying to explain what Halo 2 was going to look like if all you had to describe it was ASCII text).”
Eww, I hope you didn’t say that to the world’s expert on human interaction with computer devices.
I want to claim that Halo 2 is particularly special by acting as if we would have no way to fathom it if we were so crude as to perceive the world as ASCII.
Ignore the fact that we as humans and most creatures on earth usually have eyes and even the crudest visual perceptions are far superior the computer characters.
There’s certainly no way I could say: it looks like a 1st person landscape with fewer colors, more jagged and less real representation of objects, with all the curves or non-linear objects a bit more hard-edged or boxier….
No, prior to last year or even the advent of video (when was that? The 70s for computers?…) that could not be described at all except by a bunch of ASCII characters.
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Robert, your blog got its mojo back with this series of posts. In the last month or so, it seemed like an extension to Channel 9. But, with the last few posts, its back to being a blog to read for good geek stuff.
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Robert, your blog got its mojo back with this series of posts. In the last month or so, it seemed like an extension to Channel 9. But, with the last few posts, its back to being a blog to read for good geek stuff.
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The question we must ask is: “Is Englebart that far ahead? Or is the industry (specifically Microsoft and Apple which dominate) that far behind?”
A similarly interesting talk is Alan Kay’s “Are we there yet?” He points out that the average computer today is still much too rigid and too difficult to use to create things, visualize things, and experiment.
If what you want to do doesn’t fit into one of the little “boxes” like MS Word, MS Excel, or MS powerpoint, then you’ll have to program, and programming today remains tremendously primative (C#, Java, and the current crop of languages are baby steps on the near end of a road that was paved long ago at PARC).
Of course, Windows is set in stone. The only way to do anything is to throw the whole mess out and begin again. (See http://opencroquet.org for some folks doing this). Microsoft will reach out and crush any effort to do this as they have much too much invested in buggy whips to allow internal combustion to gain a foothold.
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The question we must ask is: “Is Englebart that far ahead? Or is the industry (specifically Microsoft and Apple which dominate) that far behind?”
A similarly interesting talk is Alan Kay’s “Are we there yet?” He points out that the average computer today is still much too rigid and too difficult to use to create things, visualize things, and experiment.
If what you want to do doesn’t fit into one of the little “boxes” like MS Word, MS Excel, or MS powerpoint, then you’ll have to program, and programming today remains tremendously primative (C#, Java, and the current crop of languages are baby steps on the near end of a road that was paved long ago at PARC).
Of course, Windows is set in stone. The only way to do anything is to throw the whole mess out and begin again. (See http://opencroquet.org for some folks doing this). Microsoft will reach out and crush any effort to do this as they have much too much invested in buggy whips to allow internal combustion to gain a foothold.
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About the audio of the video, I’ve found I can pull out people’s voices if I run a low pass filter. People’s voices are usually in the higher treble area then the background sound. So by adjusting a filter that clips the bass sound you can better hear people talking in a crowd. I use Final Cut Pro. Let me know what you use and I’ll see if there’s any filter that may work.
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About the audio of the video, I’ve found I can pull out people’s voices if I run a low pass filter. People’s voices are usually in the higher treble area then the background sound. So by adjusting a filter that clips the bass sound you can better hear people talking in a crowd. I use Final Cut Pro. Let me know what you use and I’ll see if there’s any filter that may work.
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Large Scale Collective IQ Part II with Doug Engelbart
http://www.futuresalon.org/2005/11/collective_iq_p.html
IT Conversations: Doug Engelbart – Large-Scale Collective IQ
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail378.html
Large-Scale Collective IQ: Facilitating its Evolution (2004)
http://www.archive.org/details/FutureSalon_11_2004
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Large Scale Collective IQ Part II with Doug Engelbart
http://www.futuresalon.org/2005/11/collective_iq_p.html
IT Conversations: Doug Engelbart – Large-Scale Collective IQ
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail378.html
Large-Scale Collective IQ: Facilitating its Evolution (2004)
http://www.archive.org/details/FutureSalon_11_2004
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Sorry to be picky, but wouldn’t it be “Engelbart”…?
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Sorry to be picky, but wouldn’t it be “Engelbart”…?
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Robert, you are a lucky guy. You probably would have killed Buzz if he let you out on this. 😉
If I have to pick one flabbergasting moment of this year, it was seeing the video at reboot and thinking (like most of the people in the room): what the hell have they done the last 27 years? They had everything already there.
It leaves me with the question: What did they also invent we have not seen yet, and why have we not seen it?
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Robert, you are a lucky guy. You probably would have killed Buzz if he let you out on this. 😉
If I have to pick one flabbergasting moment of this year, it was seeing the video at reboot and thinking (like most of the people in the room): what the hell have they done the last 27 years? They had everything already there.
It leaves me with the question: What did they also invent we have not seen yet, and why have we not seen it?
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Thanks for pointing me in his direction. Right now I am reading his 1962 AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework. It is a terrific piece. And when you think this was written back then; it’s amazing!
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Thanks for pointing me in his direction. Right now I am reading his 1962 AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework. It is a terrific piece. And when you think this was written back then; it’s amazing!
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The “invention” part, is only but one factor, you also have to factor in a need and a market, the problem with geeks and techie utopians, is that they only ever recall the hits. Whole lotta vapor and whole lot of wasted money chasing ratholed dreams.
That being said, per Xerox PARC taken decades for things to impact. Even yet now, not much closer to Kay’s “Dynabook”, the Tablet being a poor substitute. Still legend’s like Butler W. Lampson and Chuck Thacker are some of MFST’s best employees. Just a darned shame MFST can’t milk it.
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The “invention” part, is only but one factor, you also have to factor in a need and a market, the problem with geeks and techie utopians, is that they only ever recall the hits. Whole lotta vapor and whole lot of wasted money chasing ratholed dreams.
That being said, per Xerox PARC taken decades for things to impact. Even yet now, not much closer to Kay’s “Dynabook”, the Tablet being a poor substitute. Still legend’s like Butler W. Lampson and Chuck Thacker are some of MFST’s best employees. Just a darned shame MFST can’t milk it.
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“He invented the mouse and many of the concepts that you are now using to read my words. ”
Doug Englebart invented the English language?
As far as not being able to describe things without pictures. I imagine Shakespeare and Robert Frost would disagree with you.
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“He invented the mouse and many of the concepts that you are now using to read my words. ”
Doug Englebart invented the English language?
As far as not being able to describe things without pictures. I imagine Shakespeare and Robert Frost would disagree with you.
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I’m jealous that a turd of a man like Scoble gets to meet interesting people like this fellow.
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I’m jealous that a turd of a man like Scoble gets to meet interesting people like this fellow.
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This guy is on NerdTV in a couple of weeks i think.
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This guy is on NerdTV in a couple of weeks i think.
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I had a similar energizing experience with Englebart, linked below.
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I had a similar energizing experience with Englebart, linked below.
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Some people are missing the point in comparing ASCII to the current state of the Web. Yes, you can describe anything in ASCII but you inevitably get a ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ effect. Everybody has a different image in their head when playing Zork. Which is fine if the originating medium is text.
But movies, comics, and video games are far more than text. The creator or creators are presenting not just a ‘super soldier in green armor’ but rather a very specific representation of what that guy looks like, how he sounds, how he moves, etc. A skillful writer may decribes these attributes well but it is not remotely the same experience.
Some things are better left to the reader’s imagination. I recall a long running SF series about a far future military officer in which different artists were used for most of the covers. (Some of the artwork was possibly created for other material and repurposed for these books.) Some of these had an interpretation of the character that was jarringly in disagreement with my own imagined version of the character. Some seemed pretty spot on. But all were valid based on the text and the clash with my aesthetics was as much my fault as theirs. I’d be interested to know which covers the author most favors.
Halo 2 is not just ideas on a page but also how they’re embodied by the running game. The quality of those visuals and other elements of the presentation are critical selling points of the product. Promoting that product on a text-only medium would be painful.
A great idea is only step one of innovation. It took decades for the set of ideas Engelbart presented in the 60’s to catch on because these were things to make computers usable by a far wider range of people. That didn’t avoid the issue of what the computers cost. It took many years before computers were even a common retail item and more before the machines possessed the level of power needed to bring Engelbart’s concept to a wide audience.
It isn’t just a matter of reaching consumers. It also means making the cost of entry low enough so developing around new ideas isn’t restricted to a small elite. The number of people creating video games exploded when there were affordable personal computers that allowed nearly anyone to learn how to program and have access to a platform where they could publish software without being in the business of manufacturing the platform. There is a huge difference between producing an arcade machine and a game that runs on a home computer. In 1979 all of the people in the world who had created a video game could hold a meeting in any big hotel ballroom. Just a few years later that number had increased by orders of magnitude. The difference? Millions of relatively cheap home computers.
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Some people are missing the point in comparing ASCII to the current state of the Web. Yes, you can describe anything in ASCII but you inevitably get a ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ effect. Everybody has a different image in their head when playing Zork. Which is fine if the originating medium is text.
But movies, comics, and video games are far more than text. The creator or creators are presenting not just a ‘super soldier in green armor’ but rather a very specific representation of what that guy looks like, how he sounds, how he moves, etc. A skillful writer may decribes these attributes well but it is not remotely the same experience.
Some things are better left to the reader’s imagination. I recall a long running SF series about a far future military officer in which different artists were used for most of the covers. (Some of the artwork was possibly created for other material and repurposed for these books.) Some of these had an interpretation of the character that was jarringly in disagreement with my own imagined version of the character. Some seemed pretty spot on. But all were valid based on the text and the clash with my aesthetics was as much my fault as theirs. I’d be interested to know which covers the author most favors.
Halo 2 is not just ideas on a page but also how they’re embodied by the running game. The quality of those visuals and other elements of the presentation are critical selling points of the product. Promoting that product on a text-only medium would be painful.
A great idea is only step one of innovation. It took decades for the set of ideas Engelbart presented in the 60’s to catch on because these were things to make computers usable by a far wider range of people. That didn’t avoid the issue of what the computers cost. It took many years before computers were even a common retail item and more before the machines possessed the level of power needed to bring Engelbart’s concept to a wide audience.
It isn’t just a matter of reaching consumers. It also means making the cost of entry low enough so developing around new ideas isn’t restricted to a small elite. The number of people creating video games exploded when there were affordable personal computers that allowed nearly anyone to learn how to program and have access to a platform where they could publish software without being in the business of manufacturing the platform. There is a huge difference between producing an arcade machine and a game that runs on a home computer. In 1979 all of the people in the world who had created a video game could hold a meeting in any big hotel ballroom. Just a few years later that number had increased by orders of magnitude. The difference? Millions of relatively cheap home computers.
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