[amilein7minutes]

I have a theory as to why Engelbart (and in general, some other thinkers far ahead of their time) have trouble being appreciated and why "serious" computer scientists (in general, academics) of their time met them with a "thundering silence".

Quoting from the article, Engelbart's 1963 work has these lines:

"This hypothetical writing machine permits you to use a new process for composing text. For instance, trial drafts can rapidly be composed from rearranged excerpts of old drafts, together with new words or passages which you insert by hand typing. Your first draft may represent a free outpouring of thoughts in any order, with the inspection of foregoing thoughts continuously stimulating new considerations and ideas to be entered. If the tangle of thoughts represented by the draft becomes too complex, you can compile a reordered draft quickly. It would be practical for you to accommodate more complexity in the trails of thought you might build in search of the path that suits your needs."

The year was 1963 and the first word processors such as WordPerfect, came in 1979, 16 years later, and the mouse demo only took place 5 years later. Basically, Engelbart talked about word processors in the punch card era when there was no human-computer interaction, only programmer-computer interaction, and that too, in minimal amounts.

In comparison, Turing was taken seriously by serious mathematicians of his time, although he wrote in the 1940s about the idea of stored programs, in an era where the punch cards themselves didn't exist. This might be because his central idea was purely theoretical, and only required a construction of a hypothetical machine (a Turing machine), and thus, academics could interpret it as a thought experiment. Thought experiments are and were always considered "serious".

On the other hand, when the central idea is not theoretical, but involves construction of machines, it is interpreted as philosophical or useless. I'm saying ideas that essentially rest on engineering constructions that do not yet exist, are often dismissed in the academic space, but purely theoretical ones are found to be interesting, although they also require imagination of the non-existent.

Just a theory, I may be wrong. I just got to wondering if Engelbart had presented the idea of breaking down complexity with a more theoretical framework (e.g., constructed a mathematical model for augmented memory or something like that), would he have found NSF funding sooner?

[DonaldFisk]

Punched cards predate electronic computers by a long way. They were used in the Jacquard loom (1804) and Hollerith tabulating machines (1889). Other paper instruction storage included paper rolls, used for weaving by Bouchon (1725) and for playing music by Gavioli (1892).

IBM introduced the 80 column punched card in 1928, and that's what computers have been using until recently. Gavioli's book music is a precursor of MIDI.

[mcguire]

You may be on to something. My first feeling on reading "this hypothetical writing machine..." is, "pffft; call me when you have something tangible."

The difference, I think, between a thought experiment and a hypothetical engineering construction is that the former have solid rules. You can argue for or against it without introducing new hypotheses. A Turing Machine is literally impossible because you cannot get unbounded amounts of memory, but the "rules of the game" are given; a word processor in 1963 is (probably) possible, but that is really all you know.

For example, take your quote. How is that different from a stack of note cards, a technology common in 1963? In that it is different from a stack of note cards, can modern word processors do what he describes ("compile a reordered draft quickly", from a too-complex tangle of thoughts)?

[mattrp]

You are right that it is the style of how you communicate something that matters as well as understanding your place in history. Perhaps Turing resonated and Engelbart didn’t is because of when they spoke. But there’s another aspect to this and that is perhaps engelbart didn’t understand his audience. By comparison jobs went to the computer club not to seek acceptance but to sell. Once he realized they were not his audience he moved on to an audience that would. But in engelbart’s case he kept selling.

[joshmarlow]

This may not be limited to academia. It sounds very similar to the startup community; everyone is always looking for a sexy idea, but there are so many older and inefficient industries that are likely ripe for disruption.

It kind of feels like an uncanny valley effect - an effort that's immediately doable isn't as interesting (perhaps because anyone could do it). But a more radical notion is more fun.

[excursionist]

I think the main difference between the Engelbart work you cite and Turing, for example, is the ambiguity of their ideas. It's a lot easier to come up with some futuristic idea about _what_ is being done, then a specification of _how_ that futuristic thing is done. There are so many interesting ideas that can be found in science fiction (and many of them end up being implemented decades later), but they are not very useful without the knowledge of how to actually build these things.

[rozab]

> he wrote in the 1940s about the idea of stored programs, in an era where the punch cards themselves didn't exist

Punchcards were used for the 1890 US census. The standard 80 column format was introduced by IBM in 1928.

[Vervious]

totally agree. Turing was a mathematician - today to see a parallel we can look at how far quantum theory is ahead of quantum computing devices