# Douglas Engelbart

Inventor and researcher who turned the idea of augmenting human intellect into a working research program and the demos that defined modern computing.

**Douglas Engelbart** (1925–2013) led the Augmentation Research Center at SRI, where he developed the mouse, hypertext editing, and collaborative tools — showcased in the 1968 "Mother of All Demos."

## Key work in the library

- [Augmenting Human Intellect](/docs/augmenting-human-intellect.md) (1962) — a conceptual framework for raising human problem-solving capability with computers.

## Significance

Engelbart turned [Licklider](/wiki/licklider.md)'s symbiosis into engineering, building directly on [Vannevar Bush](/wiki/vannevar-bush.md)'s Memex. His goal of amplifying *ordinary* people's capability — not concentrating it — directly informs the equity principle of the Independent Internet.

---

## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [As We May Think](/docs/as-we-may-think.md) — Vannevar Bush's wartime essay imagining the Memex — a personal device for storing and associatively linking all of one's books, records, and communications.
- [Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework](/wiki/augmenting-human-intellect.md) — Engelbart's SRI report laying out a systematic program for using computers to raise human problem-solving capability.
- [J.C.R. Licklider](/wiki/licklider.md) — Psychologist and computer scientist who envisioned human-computer symbiosis and the networked 'Intergalactic Computer Network.'
- [Man-Computer Symbiosis](/wiki/man-computer-symbiosis.md) — Licklider's foundational vision of humans and computers as coupled partners, not master and tool — the conceptual seed of interactive computing.
- [Vannevar Bush](/wiki/vannevar-bush.md) — Engineer and wartime science administrator whose 1945 essay imagined the Memex, the conceptual seed of hypertext and the personal knowledge base.
- [Independent Internet (Web 4.0)](/wiki/web4.md) — The web forgot who it was for. Web 4.0 — the Independent Internet — is a resilient, self-hosted internet people own and control. Explore the research.