The Mother of All Demos

Geek history, or why 2009 has nothing on 1968.

Today always has a certain arrogance towards yesterday — each generation likes to credit itself with the invention of, well, everything that matters. But certain things — personal computing, social networking, digital collaboration — are surely the product of our contemporary era, right? Wrong.

On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart of the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute staged what’s been dubbed “the mother of all demos” — a 90-minute public multimedia demonstration that debuted personal and interactive computing to the world.

It was the cultural grand entrance of many of the technologies we use today: the computer mouse, hypertext linking, real-time text editing, multiple windows with flexible view control, screenshare teleconferencing.

Cure your presentism bias with a look at the full 1968 demo and catch Dr. Engelbart’s talk at Google Authors, where he delves into 57 years worth of his fascinating work on social networking systems.

The Mother of All Music Visualization What global warming has to do with the formative role of music in 20th-century culture. MUSIC THE DIRECTOR Two of our most popular recent stories, the fan-made Goldfrapp music video and the brilliant new album by David Byrne and Brian Eno, meet today in the mother of all music visualization....
Don’t Click It Why hover is the new click and how to undo 30 years of habituation. The best of innovation usually involves taking something completely mundane and turning it into something completely different. Which is why we’re all over DONTCLICK.IT, a revolutionary interface that does away with web standbys like clicks and...
Playing Nice: Top 5 Charity Games Rice from Shakespeare, how to help cure cancer, 60 million ways spam helps literature, a first-person snooper, and solid proof you may be the wrong gender. In their quest for a share of our increasingly strained attention capacity, many charities and nonprofits have resorted to some rather atypical methods. Including...
Gadgetry, Widgetry and You-name-itgetry A shirtless Tiger Woods, a very ethical octopus, how the fabric of culture makes a great quilt, why you may be a municipal light fixture, and what possessed 8,058,860 people to hurl sheep at each other. THE TENTACLES OF INNOVATION Gone are the days of boxy, bland gadgets. These days,...
Army Goes Ghost What the U.S. Army has to do with Sarah Palin, the Terminator and Men in Black. Holograms may be the stuff of CNN laughability these days, but it turns out the U.S. Army is working hard on the real stuff. According to Dr. John Parmentola, Director of Research and Laboratory...