TITLE: Another Take on "Know the Past"
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 16, 2014  4:22 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:

Ted Nelson offers a particularly stark assessment of how well
we fulfill our obligation to
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2014-01.html#e2014-01-07T16_09_18.htm">
   know the past</A>
in his
<A HREF="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-homage-to-douglas-engelbart-and-a-critique-of-the-state-of-tech/">
   eulogy for Douglas Engelbart</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 To quote Joan of Arc, from Shaw's play about her: "When will
 the world be ready to receive its saints?"

 I think we know the answer -- when they are dead, pasteurized
 and homogenized and simplified into stereotypes, and the true
 depth and integrity of their ideas and initiatives are forgotten.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nelson's position is stronger yet, because he laments the way in
which Engelbart and his visions of the power of computing were
treated throughout his career.  How, he wails, could we have let
this vision slip through our hands while Engelbart lived among
us?

Instead, we worked on another Java IDE or a glue language for
object-relational mapping.  All the while, as Nelson says, "the
urgent and complex problems of mankind have only grown more urgent
and more complex."

This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?
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