[glenra]

Unlike the others, Englebart didn't directly accomplish very much. Most of his work was a long way removed from anything that was commercially viable. Seeming prophetic is nice, but actually getting stuff done is better. The relevant Jobs quote is "Real artists ship" - Englebart was not good at that part. Which is what got him kicked out of SRI.

Some of what was shown in The Mother of All Demos had been done elsewhere better - his group suffered from Not Invented Here Syndrome. He was enamored with the idea of one big software program that did everything (badly) rather than a lot of component parts that do specific things well - sort of the polar opposite of Dennis Ritchie's approach to problem solving. So his team had a program that did email and text editing and videoconferencing and drawing but didn't do any of those things as well as a system that focused specifically on any one of those things.

On the plus side, he had lots of severe personal setbacks (including at one point his house burning down) that could be played up for melodrama. And the end was poignant. And he did patent the mouse. And some of his most oddball ideas seem even more prophetic today (life-blogging) while others are weird enough to be entertaining on their own (chorded one-hand keyboards).