I just finished reading The Engelbart Hypothesis by Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg. ($20 on Amazon.)
While Doug Engelbart is best known as the inventor of the mouse, the man is responsible for so much more. Doug conceptualized social networking more than 50 years ago! He described using connections to boost collective intelligence before computer networks existed. One of the first two nodes of the internet ended in his office at SRI.
You’ve probably heard the tale about Steve Jobs lifting the Mac’s windows, icons, and mouse from Xerox PARC; PARC got them from Doug Engelbart. For Doug, the hardware and software were merely a means to an end: harnessing the power of collaboration to augment the intelligence of humankind.
Every problem facing humanity on a global scale is complex, and so, the solutions to those problems are also complex. Solutions themselves often bring on new unforeseen problems. Models for prolem-solving do not address the needed complexity. The solutions are too big for any one individual or any one discipline.
This is the heart of what I’ve called Learnscapes.
The culture, training, organizations, tools, artifacts and physical infrastructure all determine the capability of any individual or group to perform.
Valerie and Eileen talked with Doug for several years to tease out his amazing story. They’ve succeeded in capturing Doug’s thoughts in 140 pages of simple, accessible language and graphics. If you want to know where Web 2.0 came from, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
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Doug Engelbart wasn’t the only one to think about this stuff before the tools were around to allow it, although his story certainly does sound worth a read as it seems to come from a different perspective to the Illich and Bandura stuff I’m familiar with.
I hadn’t heard of Learnscapes either – and they tie in so well with what I’m studying. Thanks for a whole bunch of new ideas!