In Mother of All Demos, they took the “show” rather than “tell” approach, and immediately you can see how this is used in keynotes and other tech presentations to this day. Doug Englebart begins by showing the first version of the copy/ paste feature we know and love. Which I think was humorous in that they don’t use that exact phrasing when describing the actions. He introduces a file structure, word processing, lists, a mouse interface, links, zooming, and many other features that we are still in use with present-day computers. It’s really interesting to see where it all started, and how imperfect it was. Even during the demo, you see Doug get a bit confused with where certain words moved to, and at one point his mouse just disappeared! They went so in-depth with their explanation it was quite amazing but I got so lost when they went over the code structure and I’m from the future.
A lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. We still use computer mice, keyboards and obviously, a screen is essential. This version of Copy/ paste, word processing, and file structures are really astonishing first attempts. Clearly one of the biggest evolutions of our computers is the interface. Throughout the demo, we see Doug and the other presenters using a mouse, with a keyboard in the middle, and some kind of piano key-like device.
I wasn’t sure what it was because I’d never seen anything like it before. I realized (or at least I think I realized) it’s essentially a physical version of a menu, similar to what we would have today if we right-clicked on something. This aspect of the old computer is a bit confusing to me. The mouse had 3 buttons but then almost all the inputs came from this little key-pad. I think it was also pretty obvious this didn’t work out that well since Doug had to re-do more than a couple of tasks. It seems like you have to memorize which combination of keys does what, then there’s also having to remember what the abbreviations mean in the UI. On top of all that there’s also the ginormous size of the computer to deal with. At the end of the day, however, this was a huge step towards personal computing, graphic interface design, physical interface, and even how we present technology.
The development of computers has been a marathon and not a run despite the more recent boom of tech advancements. Watching this made me realize how far we have really come.
Don’t doubt of that, they can really predict the future.
I like how you talk about not only the computer, but the tools that he used to assist his demo like the keyboard and mouse. Without those two tools, using the computer would be impossible.
I like how you broke down the demo and discussed some of the things I also found strange like the piano key-like device.