NMC Campus Observer

Attend Program For the Future Doug Engelbart Recognition in SL

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Dec 6, 2008 11:16am

If you have no idea who Doug Engelbart is, drop your mouse, your keyboard interface, your desktop windowing system, your local area networks, and fly to WikiPedia to read about the Mother of All Demos which took place 40 years ago Monday.

You can watch the Mother of All Demos video at the Babbage Amphitheater at NMC Conference Center.

This demo foreshadowed most features we take for granted in our modern computing. Engelbart’s contributions were more than hardware and software, and he was a visionary in organizational concepts and human network potential. So on December 8 and 9, a group of colleagues are gathering in San Jose to honor him and his ideas which are now known as Collective Intelligence at the Program for the Future:

Engelbart dreamed of technology and tools that increased our Collective Intelligence and a stunning example of how it works. Now it’s up to us to take up the challenge. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Engelbart’s astounding demo, the Program for the Future is bringing together some of the best minds in science, media, business and education — and we hope you will be among them — to explore the question: what’s next?

On December 8 and 9 we’ll hear from some of today’s most provocative speakers, then brainstorm ways to enhance our capability for problem solving, decision making, knowledge organization, and planning in every field of human endeavor.

The NMC is honored to be part of the program, invited to share at 10:20am 11:15am Monday PT on “The Story of the New Media Consortium – a networked improvement community inspired by Engelbart ” — which is not about really about us but the community we work with, in Second Life and way beyond. The NMC has had a strong connection with Doug and his ideas on networked organizations, and in turn we honor him as the main entry to the NMC Conference Center in Second Life:

While this is an exciting program, not everyone can travel to San Jose… but you can tune into the events in Second Life via at the Tech Museum of Innovation. To get access, you just need to do the free registration at http://virtualparticipants.eventbrite.com/.

It’s quite a lineup!

Story filed under: Campus Headlines

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