''The Mother of All Demo's'' - The 1968 presentation that started computing as we know it

[Redneckerz]

Introduction:

Imagine a world without social media. Without collaboration. Without mouse, without email, without a search function. Computing was something left only to mathematicians, NASA employees, and universities. Whilst computers were used to put people on the moon, back at home, everyone was still knee-deep in the code, and with clunky, if available, input methods.

Douglas Engelbart and his team spent several years, with government funding and other funding from places such as NASA, to deliver a presentation on December 9, 1968 the world had never seen. A true landmark demonstration - The Mother of All Demo's.

 

History:

Utilizing the unique possibilities put forward by time-sharing, using the SDS 940 system and a host of inventions/applications by Bill English and several other key figures, The Mother of All Demos could kick off.

Wikipedia says it better than i ever could, and i bold the important parts.

Quote

''The live demonstration featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware and software system called the oN-Line System or, more commonly, NLS. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor (collaborative work). Engelbart's presentation was the first to publicly demonstrate all of these elements in a single system. The demonstration was highly influential and spawned similar projects at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s. The underlying technologies influenced both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows graphical user interface operating systems in the 1980s and 1990s.''

Legacy:
The Mother of All Demo's was the blueprint for much of the things we do today. From user interaction through mouse, to social media, video conferencing and search engines - The list goes on and on. The majority of all these constructs, systems and examples were demonstrated all at once on that December day in 1968.

It has been a personal favorite of mine to watch and gloss over, because so many things are highlighted there that are so natural today. Even in 2020, the presentation does not feel dated, yet it was the first, and only one of its kind. It influenced the predecessor of the Internet, ARPANET - And it influenced an entire industry to be shaped and formed in the upcoming decades.

Amazingly, this presentation has not been selected yet for the US Registry for its cultural significance. The Mother of all Demo's is a demonstration with a lasting influence, The ''Eureka!'' moment for general computing in its history.

Video:
The video shown below is the complete cut, with two black outs - The presentation ran for so long that film reels had to be changed mid-presentation. Partial rehearsals were done for the presentation by Engelbart and the team, but a great deal is entirely improvised. Despite this, the presentation itself is surprisingly modern and ran for the most part very well. Small errors were made along the way, but the kinds of troubles Engelbart and the team are facing as the (live) presentation went on is surprisingly similar to how today's computer management and helpdesking goes around.
 

 

• Wikipage for the Mother of All Demos.
• ''As We May Think'', a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush, whose work became the main inspiration for Engelbart to put the theories put forward in the paper into practice.

[kalaeth]

I'm 30 minutes in, and that 5 key keyboard is awesome :D 

Thanks for this, someone I'd never seen or read about it until now.

[hybridial]

50 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Introduction:

Imagine a world without social media.

 

Don't know if that's the best lead in because that world is better than this one :P

 

Fair point on everything else of course though. 

[Redneckerz]

28 minutes ago, hybridial said:

 

Don't know if that's the best lead in because that world is better than this one :P

 

Fair point on everything else of course though. 

Social media has its fair and good uses - Heck the demo demonstrates a pre-historic example of what we now would call a mailbox, leaving messages for others. It also features live video streaming as a conference - One of the key features of social media today (Zoom, Teams, Skype, and in a lesser degree, Tik Tok)

[MrFlibble]

The leap in technology is almost creepy