His teaching fostered creativity, initiative, collaboration and practical application. Some of his students’ projects, like programs teaching children about sickle cell anemia and AIDS, have been used in hospitals and social welfare agencies all over the world.

Doug Smith’s approach to technology, though scientifically informed and always current, was profoundly humanistic. He regarded hypertext and multimedia as new forms of communication that could be understood and controlled with the traditional concepts of rhetoric. His pioneering extension of technology was accompanied by a healthy scepticism and a critical awareness of its dangers.

Doug Smith devoted great effort to awakening his colleagues to the promises and threats of the computer revolution as well as to mentoring those who wished to participate in it. He coached Professor Kathleen Lant, who in turn trained and inspired many people in the English department and the College of Liberal Arts and went on to a post as Instructional computing dean at CSU Hayward.

This is a selection of web projects left on Doug’s Server, “Rhetoric” at the time of his death:

• Home Page
• English 411: Writing Interactive Documents
• English 519: Web Authoring
  • 1998 sample student projects
• UWeb: Producing Cal Poly’s Home page
• Interactive Studies: A proposal for an interdisciplinary program at Cal Poly
• Digital MA: A proposal and plan for a new MA program at Cal Poly

This is a selection of non-html projects produced by Doug and downloadable by FTP

• The Blake Multimedia Project
• Pigface [This is a projector file that will download via FTP, but only to a MAC. It’s 10Mgb, but worth waiting for]

Obituary San Luis Obispo Tribune

Eulogy by Russ Smith, brother, editor and publisher of The New York Press

To add to this website, please contact smarx@calpoly.edu

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