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Alan Kay makes reference to Doug Engelbart's 1968 "Mother of All Demos." I show that demo to all the new members of my UX team at work, to remind them of where
by jaysonelliot 16y ago
Alan Kay makes reference to Doug Engelbart's 1968 "Mother of All Demos."
I show that demo to all the new members of my UX team at work, to remind them of where we come from, and to show some brilliant ideas in computing that still don't work as well today.
In it, he is able to manipulate data without "opening" and "saving" documents, he just writes data as naturally and seamlessly as one might jot a note on a pad of paper.
Also, and this is what really floors me - he is able to share his screen with a remote user, and vice versa - it's built into the system. In 2011, we still need to install software on each machine to do this, and there's no universal standard for the action of simply sharing your dang desktop with someone else.
Englebart, Alan Kay, Ivan Sutherland, Jef Raskin - all giants. I'm so happy to see their work continue to be studied and celebrated.
Edit: I didn't say, but should have--thank you old_sound for sharing this, I would have never seen it otherwise.
- david927 16y agoAnd the irony is that I could only wish we were attempting to stand on the shoulders of these giants. We make little effort to move the industry forward and are quite happy just making our fortunes off of it. Alan Kay is still going strong: VPRI are a fantastic team and they are working hard in some innovative areas.
- old_sound 16y agoNo problem man. I just found it on Reddit, but thought the title there wasn't telling enough about the contents, and thought sharing here might interest people as well. Cheers.
- malkia 16y agoQuote: "Also, and this is what really floors me - he is able to share his screen with a remote user, and vice versa - it's built into the system. In 2011, we still need to install software on each machine to do this, and there's no universal standard for the action of simply sharing your dang desktop with someone else." The tragedy of the commons? We learn our kid to share his toys with other kids, yet Olivia (a kid's show feauring a family of pigs) said it best - "Mommy why don't you share your car with granny" - something along the line. So the technical achievement was done already years ago! Or at least it's establishment. Since them we are fighting the social problem - access, passwords, protection, process isolation, boxing, etc - all that would've not been needed in early days of computing. I wish that would've been not needed today, yet as a human I know that we better have it.