He's the first to admit he's a lousy salesman of his own ideas, a serious handicap for a revolutionary. The chord keyset, I subsequently learned, is ingenious. It's an auxiliary to a standard keyboard, allowing you to deliver commands in a shorthand code. If your right hand is busy using the mouse, your left hand can keep working. Engelbart's easygoing manner vanishes.
People balk if they have to learn a different way of doing something.
The keyset has never been turned into a viable commercial product - which drives Engelbart nuts. To Engelbart, the fact that many of his innovations are user-friendly is incidental. He believes the commercial world's fixation on user-friendliness has seriously slowed down the computer revolution. Instead of developing the best tools, marketers want products that are easy to use, even if they aren't the most productive. So consumers are sold inferior products.