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Blog912: December 7, 2008; Posted by Greg Lloyd;  1 Attachment |
 On Dec 9, 1968 Doug Engelbart stepped onto a stage in front of about 2,000 people. He adjusted his headset and sat down before his mouse, chord key set, and twenty-two foot TV projection screen. His NLS/Augment system prefigured the Web, shared screen teleconferencing, much of what we know as hypertext, in what's often called the Mother of All Demos. Read this authorized clip from John Markoff's excellent book What the Dormouse Said or see the video of the Demo. |
| Although the anniversary has gotten some trade press coverage, most stories call this the "40th anniversary of the mouse". Yes, Doug and his team at SRI invented the mouse - and Doug demonstrated it during the shared screen interactive hypertext demo. |
| But to put things in perspective - praising Doug and his team for creating the mouse is a little like praising Leonardo da Vinci and the kids who hung around Florence for the quality of their paint brushes. The mouse is arguably one of the least of an impressive roster of inventions demonstrated that day. What they showed that day inspired generations of researchers including Alan Kay and Andy van Dam. John Naughton of the Guardian wrote: |
Mr Engelbart has always viewed technology as a means to an end, not an end in itself. The vision that has driven him since he was a radar technician in the US army in World War Two is the idea that computers offer a way of augmenting human intelligence - power-steering for the mind. That's why his Stanford lab was called the 'Augmentation Lab'
... if progress on making computers easier to use has been limited, we have made even less headway on Engelbart's goal of using them to augment human intelligence. And such progress as has been made comes not from the software that runs on PCs but from the fact that we have found a way of enabling them - and therefore their users - to communicate. In that sense, Wikipedia is closer to an embodiment of 'augmentation' than any piece of software ever written. And Google can be seen as a memory prosthesis for humanity - or at least for that part of it that has access to the network.
On Tuesday morning, Engelbart and his wife will kick off a conference at the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation to mark the 40th anniversary of his landmark San Francisco presentation. The subject is 'collective intelligence'. He's a famously prickly character, so my guess is that his reaction will be to observe, as Gandhi famously did when asked what he thought of Western civilisation: 'That would be a good idea.' - John Naughton The Guardian Dec 7, 2008
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| One caveat on Mr. Naughton's story. I wouldn't call Doug a 'prickly character'; he is kind, thoughtful and one of the most considerate people I've met. I would say that Doug is often bemused by the length of time it has taken for people to understand his motivation and objectives. |
| As Alan Kay said: “Less progress has been made in the last 25 years than before 1980... the commercialization of technology spread it wide and thin without getting to the real heart of the matter. “We call it reinventing the flat tire. We wish they’d reinvent the wheel.” " |
| Doug started off several decades ahead of the rest of the world - and we're finally starting to catch up. Happily over the past decade Doug has been getting the recognition he richly deserves (National Medal of Technology, Lemilson-MIT prize, Turing Award, Lovelace medal, etc). |
| The Program for the Future is hosting a two day celebration starting Monday Dec 8 (open to virtual participation - free registration required), followed by SRI's Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing event at Stanford University Memorial Hall (tickets required). |
| I hope SRI or Stanford will post a video of the event. It's awfully ironic that the birth of interactive hypertext collaboration will be celebrated by a Stanford paid admission event with no live Web broadcast or promise of a public record video. |
See also
Blog1246: Doug Engelbart | 85th Birthday Jan 30, 2010
Blog408: ... And here's what Enterprise 2.0 looked like in 1968 - Engelbart Demo
Blog50: Traction Roots - Doug Engelbart
Blog9: Tricycles vs. Training Wheels - Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay |
Links on Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee and the future of the web:
Blog936: Reinventing the Web
Blog384: Enterprise 2.0 - Letting hypertext out of its box |
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Bravo Doug!