(2002-06-06) c

A scary smell of Religious Cult pervades the Open Hyperdocument System culture. We are recruiting charter communities who have their own purposeful agendas yet recognize they need to invest in collective improvement co-evolution and development... These communities have to be ready to invest substantial time and long term effort toward the common goal... What I have found is that he (Douglas Engelbart) needs a technical person to take the time to really sit and listen and "dialogue" with him to a degree that is almost impossible for most creative technical people (whose heads are really full of their own ideas about what he is talking about, there seems to be no space for Doug's actual ideas. It doesn't help of course that he is talking about things that involve paradigm shift in might not be in widespread use for 10-20 years.) I am committed to recruiting people to have that "DiaLogue" under conditions that most conducive for Doug to express his ideas. This has emerged as the only way to try and get his ideas out while we have a chance to get them. Ignoring him is not the way to go. Debating him to convince him of a different direction other than the one he has been pursuing for over 50 years will sap precious time and energy. My dictionary doesn't seem to have that definition of "dialogue" in it.