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Press Inquiries 0Special Note re: Doug Engelbart's 100th This January 30th, 2025, marks Doug Engelbart's 100th birthday! Key links:
We're taking the opportunity to look beyond his legendary mouse invention and so-called 'Mother of All Demos', look beyond his constellation of breakthrough technological accomplishments that laid the foundation for modern computing, and indeed the last 100 years of technological wonders at our disposal, yet we've barely scratched the surface of what Doug Engelbart forsaw as being most important to society, and what it might take to achieve that. As Bret Victor, whom Alan Kay has called 'the next Doug Engelbart' so astutely wrote: "Our present-day systems do not embody Engelbart's intent. [...] Doug Engelbart took a fresh look at his goals in 1951, decided to maximize his career for the betterment of mankind, came up with a strategy to research how to dramatically increase the effectiveness of teams, initiatives, and organizations, while also learning how to accelerate progress toward that goal. He reasoned that every initiative and organization working on the toughest challenges could leverage emerging research results to yield more brilliant outcomes, faster, and solve problems heretofor unsoluable. What he was prototyping in his lab was the fast, fluid organization of the future, equipped with rapidly evolving practices and tools, evaluated by a single litmus test: "is this making us more effective and capable, is this raising the collective IQ of the group?" His constant frustrations were (1) people equating other technology that approximated some portion of the system his team was developing, developed with some other (or no) litmus test (again refer to Bret Victor quote above), without benefit of co-evolving with the organizational advancements, and (2) while missing completely the importance of the strategic approach that framed his research. It was the Bootstrap Strategy he designed and applied to great effect in the 1960s that he considered to be, by far, his most significant achievement. As he predicted, today's organizations are challenged like never before with accelerating change and disruptive forces - some positive, some negative, making the type of strategic thinking he pioneered more crucial than ever. Our goal throughout the celebrations has been to be sure Doug Engelbart's message to the future, which he first revealed in 1968, and continued to evolve and articulate throughout his career, can finally be heard. A good resource here is the online Engelbart Academy (it's free!). Press Kit 1Below are the links most commonly requested by journalists:
Terms of Use 2The copyrights on most of Doug's historic papers, photos, and video footage are held by other organizations such as SRI International where he conducted his seminal research, or the professional societies and organizations where he presented his papers and talks. Please refer to the copyright information as posted for each item in question. See our Permissions page for specifics. Contacting Us 3Please familiarize yourself with the above before you contact the Doug Engelbart Institute and/or write your piece. We spend considerable energy responding to requests from the press, and would very much appreciate this consideration in return.
We also work closely with Press Relations at SRI International where Doug Engelbart conducted his seminal research. To contact them directly via email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or phone 650-859-3845. Additional Resources 4For more background, you can use the main menu on our website to navigate the considerable resources available, including vision, initiatives, bigraphical information, writings, video archives, presentations, demos, workshops, panel discussions, topic summaries, etc. |
Bloomberg New! Browse our
"If the name Douglas C. Engelbart ever comes up on TV's Jeopardy game show, the question doubtless will have been: "Who invented the computer mouse?" In fact, that's hardly Engelbart's only claim. [...] Ask Engelbart, and he says his life's work is about an even more audacious goal: trying to figure out ways to help the human race solve its increasingly complex problems..." – Source: A man, a mouse, a mission. By Peter Burrows, Business Week, November 2, 2004. |
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