Yes, I know, the title sounds like oxymoron and to certain degree, it is. What it should maybe say is Person who should have been celebrity ...

I am not going anywere close to movies or entertainment industry with this. There are more than enough sites, blogs and gossip channels out there that look at life of movie stars or singers. I will stay within the world of computers and technology, which has its own heros and celebrities, albeit known in smaller groups. In "real world", pretty much everybody knows Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Steve Wozniak. They have made the headlines many times. Fewer people know names like James Gosling, Anders Hejlsberg, Bill Joy, Dennis Ritchie, Guido van Rossum, Guy L. Steele, Richard Stallman....

Strangely enough, there is a name in history of human-computer interaction and computer technology that is associated with such significant advances as graphical user interface, networking, groupware and internet. This man personally invented computer mouse in 1967 and his team developed hypertext, whose most famous implementation is World Wide Web.

His name is Douglas Engelbart, and he is still working - in his 81 years, as the director of his own company, the Bootstrap Institute. He never made any money on his mouse invention - the patent expired before the personal computers and GUI made the mouse ubiquitous. At least, his company is housed rent-free courtesy of the Logitech Corp., company which made lots of many on computer mice manufacturing. Nice gesture, Logitech - I will keep buying your products :-).