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I was so surprised when I watched "The Mother of All Demos" from 50+ years ago (1968) and saw what they predicted and actually implemented. They demonstrated w

I was so surprised when I watched "The Mother of All Demos" from 50+ years ago (1968) and saw what they predicted and actually implemented. They demonstrated what's happening in 2020, video conferencing, real time collaborative word processing, and etc. Truly amazing. [1] https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

vaxman 6y ago
Rewatched it on the giant touch panel in my dashboard last night. One thing that is neat is the genlock-like mix of video and computer output —pretty cool for 1968. Going to hookup a mouse today and go trackpad-free for a while on the old ‘puter in honor of his passing.
gjvc 6y ago
and probably most of most historic importance, hypertext-navigable content editing. (note that Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext" in 1963). I often wistfully hope that some group of people will retrace the steps made by that generation of researchers, and evolve a better medium than TBL-derived efforts.
cxr 6y ago
> what they predicted From Bret Victor's "A few words on Doug Engelbart"[1]: > Almost any time you interpret the past as "the present, but cruder", you end up missing the point. [...] If you attempt to make sense of Engelbart's design by drawing correspondences to our present-day systems, you will miss the point, because our present-day systems do not embody Engelbart's intent. [...] If you truly want to understand NLS, you have to forget today. Forget everything you think you know about computers. Forget that you think you know what a computer is. Go back to 1962. And then read his intent.[2] 1. http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/ http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/ 2. http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

vaxman 6y ago

Rewatched it on the giant touch panel in my dashboard last night. One thing that is neat is the genlock-like mix of video and computer output —pretty cool for 1968. Going to hookup a mouse today and go trackpad-free for a while on the old ‘puter in honor of his passing.

gjvc 6y ago

and probably most of most historic importance, hypertext-navigable content editing. (note that Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext" in 1963). I often wistfully hope that some group of people will retrace the steps made by that generation of researchers, and evolve a better medium than TBL-derived efforts.

cxr 6y ago

> what they predicted From Bret Victor's "A few words on Doug Engelbart"[1]: > Almost any time you interpret the past as "the present, but cruder", you end up missing the point. [...] If you attempt to make sense of Engelbart's design by drawing correspondences to our present-day systems, you will miss the point, because our present-day systems do not embody Engelbart's intent. [...] If you truly want to understand NLS, you have to forget today. Forget everything you think you know about computers. Forget that you think you know what a computer is. Go back to 1962. And then read his intent.[2] 1. http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/ http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/ 2. http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html