Lambda the Ultimate

I met him once just before he died after a small stint with the Hyperscope team, and it was so weird and surprising to me that he was still around. How many genius people & things have just sort of been side-lined? And that was before there was the excuse of famous start-ups vacuuming up all the air in the room, the way it goes today.

For me, and my interpretation of what I heard from Dr. Engelbart, the idea behing the MoaD is not the technology. It would be a mistake to focus on that (as Silicon Valley has done). He was truly interested in finding ways to, no joke, help humanity. Sure there are people who disagree that we're not doomed on Earth, but I sure think we are not doing well at the very least. I believe anything technological which could possibly help people *understand* what is going on *world wide* would be what matters. Or, perhaps, help forge relationships among people world wide so the matters could be properly addressed.

So morally, ethically, I do not see a direct connection with Victor's stuff. Well, having said that, no I see things like this about Victor's talk and maybe one could see attempts to liberate programming for humanity as eventually helping. But I haven't hear that Victor's foundational motivations are Engelbart's.