(2014-06-01) Was Engelbart Wrong

Was Douglas Engelbart Wrong?

Does rich Collaboration Ware solve the Wrong Problem aiming for Augmenting Human Intellect?

Maybe even Real Collaboration Challenges are the Wrong Problem-s.

Does his thinking fail the Worse Is Better lesson? (Maybe a basic Issue Tracker Wiki plus EMail is sufficient? Or rather, fancier doesn't do any better...) (On the other-other-hand, ack think how many people are using EverNote or BaseCamp instead of a Wiki. Just sad. cf Wiki Proliferation)

• note how much Mobile access improves things in the Third World, even using generic tools like FaceBook and Instant Messaging to get to market?

Analogy: Memory Machines The Evolution Of Hypertext points out that Vannevar Bush never made the transition from analogue to digital computers, and therefore his Memex idea was tied to a non-scalable approach.

Another analogy: what % of programmers have Computer Science degrees? Is worrying about quantity and diversity of Computer Science grads meaningful, if the goal is to have more/better programmers?

Does the Engelbart framing miss new Abundance? Is it focused on not-wasting scarce Talent, when there's more Leverage from mass Crowd Sourcing, or from Machine Learning on Big Data?

Random implications/solutions?

• Extending Wiki, esp to make it more useful to readers in groups (secondarily, features that make wiki that much more useful to writers, too!)
• focus on Games To Play to find solutions, whether via software or other systems
  • look esp for opportunities to use Crowd Sourcing for change!
• play with ideas for pseudo-equity Crowd Funding for micro Virtual Company-s?

(not a finished thought still, but feedback welcome!)