A Computer Revolution: Mother of All Demos

Among the major achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, the most well-known is the computer close to our lives. We are now familiar with all kinds of personal computers, laptops, and smartphones, but when the concept of “computer” was born, they did not have so many features that are easy for humans to understand and use. The first computers were heavy and bulky, taking up a whole room, and using punch cards to store very limited information. In addition, the gap between the computer languages ​​of the 50s of the twentieth century and the languages ​​used in our lives is also very large. It is difficult to use these early computers without a considerable computer learning experience. Various inconveniences made it difficult for computers at that time to become a device that everyone can access.

The conceptual prototype demonstrated by Doug Englebart and the team at Stanford University brought huge changes to the development of computers. They “showed” more and “told” less in this speech, which allowed the audience to see their results intuitively. In this conceptual prototype, there are many elements we are familiar with — lists, file windows, text processing, mouse operations, hypertext, and so on. In their design, the computer can use a keyboard and a mouse as input, and a display screen as output. After receiving information from the external world, it can visualize the processing result and return it to the external world. As users, people can quickly experience this feedback visually. This satisfies the need to closely integrate the human brain and the computer. Of course, Doug’s design also has limitations. Compared with the computers we use now, it is almost difficult for us to interact with this old computer. All operations are done on a small keyboard and mouse. However, the output screen has only text and no graphics and operation prompt. I think it is necessary to link users and products more closely, and reducing the learning cost for users to use a new design is even more important.