National Medal of Technology to Doug Engelbart

from the he's-our-hero dept.
Credit goes to Brian Berg for spotting this San Jose Mercury News article on Foresight advisor Doug Engelbart's new honor. Excerpts: "On one hand we have instant gratification — the shiny, happy kids at bigfatjackpot.com who went from zero to seven figures of net worth in a matter of months before things cooled off. On the other hand we have delayed gratification — in the noble personage of one Douglas Engelbart. Friday at a black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C., Engelbart will be one of two individuals to receive the National Medal of Technology, to be bestowed by President Clinton. The award, the nation's highest honor for technology, comes more than 30 years after he developed many of the basic tools that define today's digital world…Engelbart is more than just a great technologist. He's a humanist who sees computer-assisted communications as just a means to achieving far loftier goals. What he envisioned more than 30 years ago was comprehensive systems that would augment human decision-making. The big picture, which he continued to flesh out over the years, boiled down to this: Better tools led to better collaboration processes, which in turn led to more innovation, better decisions and better organizations. And to better chances of managing nanotechnology well, which is why Doug is an advisor to Foresight. Congrats to him!