Douglas Englebart, the visionary who led the team that pioneered the modern computer interface back in the late 1960s, died a few days ago. Interesting to contrast the relatively restrained media attention Englebart's passing received vs. the somewhat greater attention given to the late Steve Jobs. But then, Englebart only invented the mouse, he didn't get rich selling them.
I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation given by Dr. Englebart back in 2002 at a symposium held at UBC Library. As I recall (assisted by a summary in D-Lib), Dr. Englebart spoke about the philosophical issues underpinning his research (co-evolution) and the need to move beyond our current computing models to further extend the potential for collective thought. I recollect he expressed a degree of frustration that we were all still interacting with computers using technologies that he had developed decades previously.
It may have simply been that certain aspects of his talk flew over my head, but I came away with the impression that part of being a visionary might involve a certain lack of filtering; a willingness to entertain concepts that others might dismiss as too wacky to be taken seriously. You might wind up chasing down things that weren't quite ready for prime time, but on the other hand you might discover gold in things that others had overlooked or had never gotten around to thinking about.