from Martin Hardy
Today as I sit here with my computer, thinking of Monday, the day we will gather to honor Doug Engelbart, my former boss and the person who invented the mouse and many computer methodologies that became part of the Internet. His grass root ideas, with the help by others who walked on the grass, has become an enormous Internet cloud of wires and computers and software, a cloud where we can all enter and virtually touch and interact with each other from anywhere around the world. We can enter it to share our work, our concerns and ideas with each other. We use Doug’s mouse and concepts to develop or find new ideas and methods and approaches to solutions based upon unilateral expressions, individual needs, feeling, and concerns. With the click of the mouse, we can virtually hold hands and work together and help each other.
Doug, like Mandela, was a visionary. Each, in their own way, had a dream to help people. An idea that was unshakable. Man nor money could sway them. During their lives many days where dark and rainy. But they drew their warmth from their souls. And that warmth from within is what guided them down the road of their dreams.
In Doug’s passing, like Mandela, his warm soul now floats through the universe forever, weaving amongst the cosmos and the stars we see, floating there for us to reach out and absorb into our souls. Doug is helping us to connect and bootstrap with each other to make this an easier and better world to live in.
Thank you, Doug.
Tribute to Doug Engelbart 