55 years ago, the ‘Mother of All Demos’ foresaw modern computing
“On Dec. 9, 1968, Oregon-born engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart hosted a computer demonstration so groundbreaking it is known today as the “Mother of All Demos. [...] Early in his career, Engelbart decided that his life’s work would focus on solving humanity’s problems. He recognized that computers could not only help with that work, but also accelerate it. [...] He envisioned computers as communication tools that could help people learn, collaborate and tackle complex problems.”
Douglas Engelbart – Inventing the 21st Century
Douglas Engelbart - Inventing the 21st Century
In this Podcast, “we look back to the man who wanted to augment human intelligence to help us work together to solve the world's most complex problems, and in doing so invented the 21st Century. How do we get smart enough to solve the really difficult problems? Douglas Engelbart said "the better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better" where our problem-solving abilities are constantly improved, and therefore so is everything we do!"
See also Avail Formats | Show Notes
The Public Debut of a Dream
The Public Debut of a Dream
“Doug Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” 60 Years On: In October, 1962, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart published a document that synthesized over a decade of research and careful thought, a document that would illuminate the work he would do for the rest of his career. 'Augmenting Human Intellect' is both a research report and a visionary manifesto for how computers and human beings could co-evolve to foster the highest levels of human flourishing. Engelbart sought to empower humanity’s capabilities to address its most complex problems, and he saw networked computing as an essential part of that capability...”
Doug Engelbart, edge notched cards, and early links
Doug Engelbart, edge notched cards, and early links
From HUMAN '22: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Human Factors in Hypertext, June 2022. EXCERPT: "This October will be the 60th anniversary of the publication of Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect. The eventual product of this research, NLS, was a highly influential computerized hypertext system. However, the path towards augmentation started outside the traditional digital realm. Within Augmenting Human Intellect Engelbart describes how he kept a series of linked notes using edge notched cards...”
See Keynote Abstract | Conference Program
75 Years of Innovation: The Computer Mouse
75 Years of Innovation: The Computer Mouse
“A major development in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) driving the advent of more accessible and controllable consumer computers. [...] Engelbart was a visionary. He saw a world where human evolution tracked technological advances and vice versa — the two intrinsically linked and working in synchronicity.”
From the series 75 years of innovation at SRI International
Keynote: Culture of Innovation at ARPA & Xerox PARC
Culture of Innovation at ARPA & Xerox PARC
“Keynote Speaker Alan Kay presents key lessons learned from the culture within the ARPA community and Xerox PARC that fostered so many technological breakthroughs, in such a short period of time.” Includes learnings from Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect Research Center. Stories that inform future cosmic scale innovators.
Video Contents: 0:01 Introductions | 04:29 Enter Alan Kay | 22:46 Discussing Engelbart |
See also Related Essay: "How?" | Event Site
Doug Engelbart’s passing leaves a legacy to treasure
Doug Engelbart’s passing leaves a legacy to treasure
“He was a visionary inventor and engineer, a top-down changer of worlds. He had a devastatingly simple aim: to make the world a better place by augmenting the human intellect to better take on the problems the world presented. [...] His approach was not to solve individual engineering problems, but to find ways of realising his big picture, something which he devoted his whole working life to: enhancing human potential by inventing ways of thinking about, and realising, richer human-computer interaction.”
See also special compilation in Remembering Doug Engelbart
Douglas Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse and so much more, dies at 88
Douglas Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse and so much more, dies at 88
“In December 1968, his "Mother of all Demos" changed computing forever." According to Vint Cerf, Doug was one of our farthest seeing visionaries. "He had a keen sense of the way in which computers could augment human capacity to think... The [Web] is a manifestation of some of what he imagined or hoped, although his aspirations exceeded even that...”
Douglas Engelbart and the Invention of Collaborative Computing
Douglas Engelbart and the Invention of Collaborative Computing
“At the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, a soft-spoken and unassuming scientist by the name of Douglas Engelbart led an R&D team that created the first collaborative computing system. He’s best known as the inventor of the mouse, but his contributions to computing go far beyond that.”
Knowledge workshops are his hope
Knowledge workshops are his hope
“A tool to Raise Productivity” -- To Douglas Engelbart computers may eventually change man’s ways of working almost as much as the stone axe or the wheel. But the main difference is that data processing can vastly extend man’s mental powers, rather than his physical capabilities…. The purpose of all this power is to increase the productivity of the knowledge worker — the programmer, the scientist, the manager and their colleagues.
Towards the Decentralized Intellectual Workshop
Towards the Decentralized Intellectual Workshop
“For more than twenty years, Douglas Engelbart has been striving to work out a system that could radically change the way [we] work together. In this story Nilo Lindgren tells about the man, his dream, and the man-machine "augmentation system" that probably lies in the future of your own organization.”
No More Pencils, No More Books — Write and Read Electronically
No More Pencils, No More Books -- Write and Read Electronically
"In 1957, Douglas Engelbart set out to give humanity something better than paper and pencil for working out solutions to its problems. Not a specific problem, mind you, but all problems. This idea gnawed within him for seven years and led him to the Stanford Research Institute [where he] established what is now called the Augmentation Research Center."
Part of a special issue titled: Here Comes the Tuned-In, Wired-Up, Plugged-In, Hyperarticulate Speed-of-Light Society - An Electronics Special Report
(SRI-ARC Catalog Item XDOC 9705)
Whole Earth Catalog: Voices (1969)
Whole Earth Catalog: Voices
Doug: ... You could think of your center as an information domain, "and you're flying through it. And if you do some kind of mapping to feel even more intimately that it's a concept space that you're tooling around in... Where's your center of gravity when you're out in space?... The rate at which micro-miniaturization is going, you could make a computer that would be more powerful than the biggest we have now, so small that you could find a way to get the energy from a person's metabolism to run it... You're internalizing the computer like that. What's the you then?” ...
Businessmen Fascinated at Computer Conference
Businessmen Fascinated at Computer Conference
“"Imagine yourself as the board chairman of a company seeking to acquire another, smaller company. Meeting with your board of directors, you gather before a motion-picture size viewing screen as an assistant seats himself at a control panel. Onto the screen flash the names of potential companies..." Such a meeting could be envisioned as Dr. Douglas Engelbart described Monday at Civic Auditorium, in an unusual demonstration before the fall joint computer conference of his project, called Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, whose goal is to improve the effectiveness with which individuals and organizations work at intellectual tasks -- primarily a system and a vehicle to help humans operate in complex information environments.”
Learn More About the Demo
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