dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog

While the protests in Egypt were swelling last week, Douglas Engelbart was dying from kidney failure in his home in Atherton, Calif. at the age of 88. Engelbart led a revolution of a different sort by inventing the computer mouse in 1963.

By the time you read this, the Egyptian people will have spoken. Turnout looks to be strong, especially among women. Thirteen candidates are on the presidential ballot. Five are considered front-runners. Nobody knows who might wake up as Egypt’s new head of state. The fact that the outcome is uncertain is the most hopeful sign of all.

We practice hospitality in the West most easily with those most similar to us. But the ease and the similarity mean it’s not true hospitality, and it barely resembles its continuing form where it first took root.

Young men from influential families returned with relics to demonstrate their learning, but also their wonder. These would be displayed in their Cabinets of Curiosities — early Enlightenment conversation starters.

Mubarak’s name has disappeared from every commemorative site, by whatever means necessary. A spray painted “X” or strategically placed “January 25” stickers sometimes do the trick. Ridding themselves of Mubarak has been a careful operation, surgical in its precision.

Archaeologists and journalists do some of their best work when they tell the stories of everyday people. History is written by the winners, with the dissonance and texture of those who didn’t win being carefully expunged.