The perception people have of the future, of what its potential is, of what there is to do about it etcetera, is the biggest single problem in mankind’s ability in the future to harness technology and really take advantage of it … The large parts of our world … are being taken for granted and they’re not being examined ever or being considered as candidates for change, for explicit planned change. And yet the rapidity with which really dramatic-scale changes are occurring in what the capabilities of technology are, are such that by the time that really gets integrated into the whole, our whole social human system, there’s a lot of adaptation to be made.
Predictor: Engelbart, Douglas
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 interview for the video history collection of the Smithsonian Institution, interviewer Jon Eklund visits with Douglas Engelbart. Engelbart says: ”The perception people have of the future, of what its potential is, of what there is to do about it etcetera, is the biggest single problem in mankind’s ability in the future to harness technology and really take advantage of it … The large parts of our world … are being taken for granted and they’re not being examined ever or being considered as candidates for change, for explicit planned change. And yet the rapidity with which really dramatic-scale changes are occurring in what the capabilities of technology are, are such that by the time that really gets integrated into the whole, our whole social human system, there’s a lot of adaptation to be made.”
Biography:Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse, spent 40 years predicting, designing and implementing the future of organizational computing. In 1962, while at the Stanford Research Institute, he produced the paper “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework,” from which came the concepts of augmenting human intellect, improvement infrastructure, co-evolution of artifacts with social-cultural language-practices and bootstrapping. His Augmentation Research Center developed an array of important human-computer interface solutions, including hypermedia. In 1989 he co-founded the Bootstrap Institute, a non-profit organization “in a quest to form strategic alliances aimed at improving organizations and society at large.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: May 4, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Ethics/Values
Name of publication: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Video History
Title, headline, chapter name: Interview with Douglas Engelbart
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/englebar.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garber, Adam