Talk:1234: Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013)

The song he claims to have written is, of course, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". But why? /Skagedal (talk) 08:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess for the same reason he claims to have thought up YOLO and cat picture memes - he's claiming credit for many many future developments - that's the joke. Either that or the comic's claiming Douglas was a time traveller and was single handedly responsible for every invention ever! Let's face it though, much of our modern day tech wouldn't have happened without his work. I can't believe I never heard of this guy before. Hippyjim (talk) 09:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

As has since been added, it's a reference to the obscure-but-not-secret chord keyboard. Someone should really go through each clause and either give a link to that part of the demo, or the real history. 173.14.129.9 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'd guess it's because the mournful tone of the song makes it appropriate for a memorial to someone passing away.

Wwoods (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks like the Stanford site has been given the xkcd hug. Does anybody have a mirror? Spontaneous (talk) 15:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Stanford is overloaded, not only because this comic. The link is also at his wiki page.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Is it just me or is there a certain amount of deliberate irony here. Englebart was working at " A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect" and where do we end up? Lolcats....--NHSavage (talk) 19:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The "inventions in detail" section is badly written... Also, it feels weird to use Engelbart's first name to refer to him. Excessively familiar, perhaps. --24.186.79.218 01:13, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

So do it better, you are welcome here to help. And at the Stanford site he is just called "Doug", in America people are mostly using the first name.--Dgbrt (talk) 11:30, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I took a stab at cleaning up the grammar a bit, and I agree that in this context, refering to him by his last name is more appropriate. --67.71.137.146 12:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help on grammar, I'm not native English. My main source was the Stanford site mentioned at the trivia, and he is just called "Doug" there. I think even this nickname should be appropriate.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, is there any truth to the "masking codecs" claim in the comic and in the explanation of the inventions here? I watched the whole presentation on Youtube, but I can't remember that anything about audio was mentioned. Has this been presented some other time? Or is this again a joke, like the YOLO-cat claim? --84.164.96.3 12:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The alt-text, talking about Englebart looking forward to computers tracking what you're doing and who you are, is clearly a jab at the NSA and advertising tracking on the web, and probably at social networking like Facebook and Twitter. 'Direct messages', of course, is exactly the term Twitter uses. I'm unsure if this is the term Engelbart used, though: does anyone have a transcript? 141.101.99.166 17:30, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Passage of Time: There appears to be a considerable passage of time between panels one and three: note the appearance of a wireless headset. This raises the possibility that the demo presented so much new technology and took decades, during which the equipment was upgraded and the inventions demonstrated became less technologically meaningful. 162.158.38.190 09:00, 5 February 2019 (UTC)