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Switch Interviews Douglas Engelbart
noema writes "If you don't know Douglas Engelbart you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect. He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments. He is a well known WYSIWYG and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos is his thing too." Here's a link to the transcript itself, which is presented as a PDF.
...I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?
Seems almost hoaxish...
My internal parser core dumped while reading the article, so I fiddled around a bit, replacing some words and names here and there...
.Net, Internet, WiFi, USB..).
... ah! now it all begins to make sense.
"If you don't know (Bill Gates) you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect (by switching from the Mac to the Windows PC).
He (Bill Gates) was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments (besides COM,
He is a well known (command-prompt) and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos (which he gave during the anti-trust trial) is his thing too."
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You know what they say...if it's not on Oprah, its not worth knowing. Try changing the channel.
Douglas Engelbart...Since I've never heard the name before, scanning the headlines I read his last name, and was duly frightened that /. was about to post an article which had anything at all to do with Englebert Humperdink...
I obviously know nothing about the history of computers. Anyone care to explain? For me it was like Charles Babbage, fastforward to Alan Turing, fastforward to mainframes.
These elitist write-ups really bug me. Honestly, what's so hard about saying "Doug Engelbert, inventor of the *whatever*, etc.."???
I was looking for a non-Real copy of that lecture, and came across highlight excerpts on that server, courtesy of curiousLee.
He's no Ellen Feiss, that's for sure.
Now where's my tshirt.
my sig
Ciryon
also I think became too pervalent for their own good...
Take, say, the mouse... it is good for some things, but UI has became WAY too dependent on the darn thing. (Okay, I admit context sensitive menues was not one of his wrongdoings, but nontheless it was not an outcome that surprised anyone).
For WYSIWYG, it's not necessary for many things you do. In fact - it is completely for the purpose of putting things onto paper. When you take away that premises, a lot of innovative UI can get done (3D desktops, let's say).
I personally believe that a lot of stuff has really became like the iMac design - way too popular and put into way too many places. For stuff like word processing, I would prefer for it to be navigatable without myself moving my hand to the mouse at all. THAT would be peak efficiency.
(Yes I know mouse is very important for anything graphic - but admit it GUI is not the most efficient interface; it may be the most intuitive, but often you get a lot done a lot faster with just a keyboard - if a computer was designed for it. Too bad so few things are these days.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I am so fucking sick of seeing the line "Get a life." These people always seem to think that if someone's life doesn't meet their standards then they obviously do not have a life. Fuck them. In my opinion anyone who puts forth this line is an utter idiot with no real conception of what they condemn others of not having
/. is not the place to do so. I don't care if he wants to wallow in his angst, but if he complains about it then he should be prepared to solve it, or accept help from others to solve it. Of course right now you're thinking I'm an idiot who knows nothing about life or self-pity, but, you are wrong. I've had my share of troubles, more then my share, and they are my own damn problems, and I'm not going to rant about them unless I'm hoping to get help with them and if I do rant about them I'm going to do it in a good place and time, not a /. forum.
I'm not very fond of the line "Get a Life" but only because it is so over used, nearly to the point of losing all meaning. I don't known anything about this person's life except what they said (assuming that this person is actually telling the truth, which I sincerly doubt they are) but I do know that if this person is telling the truth his life doesn't meet his own standards either. If the person wants to get help he should, if he wants a life, he should get it, if he wants to die, he should kill himself. Most importantly, if he wants to whine he should find a place to do it, a depression support chat room for instance. A
I know and I use a lot of shortcuts. However, a lot of things you just can't do with keyboard because the features were never designed with keyboard in mind.
I will use MS word for and example because I am using one right now.
Take, say, window split. you can split the window, but you can't switch between them.
Another thing might be putting in tab stops.
How about easily change font? Now - I said *EASILY*. I wouldn't even mind if it was a simple something that let me get to the toolbar (come on - that's the whole point of tool bar - FREQUENTLY ACCESSED STUFF). Going into three levels of menu to change a font is rediculous.
Heck, scroll-lock don't even work (though works in Excel).
I am not saying it's not completely impossible (with enough accessibility tools you can probably use cursor keys for mouse), but applications certainly arn't designed with keyboard users in mind - even though in many instances a pure-keyboard operation would be so much faster.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"Slayton: ... about knowledge and organizations. If I think about an
/do/ know how complex things are built. I can't, this minute, tell you how an engine management computer works (I do suspensions, for now), but you can bet that if I needed to, inside two weeks I would. Knowledge is dispersed inside an organisation, but if the chief engineers don't know what is going on then the whole edifice will do a Saddam.
airplane, the manufacture of an airplane, the first thing that occurs to
me is that no one knows how an aircraft gets built. No one. There's
no one that knows how to build an airplane anymore because the
artifact of the airplane is so complex and involves so many people that
that knowledge is dispersed. It doesn't belong to one person and it
probably doesn't belong to the group. It belongs to the interactions or
the associations between people and between organizations. That's a
such a different idea about knowledge as much as it is a phenomena
that our culture has found ourselves in more recently because of what
we produce. We continue to produce a more complex world..."
Well that's you buddy. Real engineers
This whole 'we are ants powerless in the face of the complexity of modern technology' crap gives me the irrits. Just because you are a word mangler who couldn't do a technical degree doesn't mean the rest of us are that stupid.
Did anyone read this as Switch Interviews With Douglas Engelbart? I thought there was going to be some sort of contest or something. I'm pretty sure if I win I get to talk to some writer type people and he can talk to my boss.
It's definitely time for more coffee.
I know what you mean. However please consider an engineering tool no less powerful, completely text based if you want: SPICE.
Everything you ever want to do in Spice can be created in a netlist, and the result is still the same.
Besides, for when I was doing a little bit of modelling (not like 3DS / Bryce where precision don't matter so much), I typed in coordinates for a large majority of the points anyway (AutoCAD used to have a "line here there" command, IIRC?) because mousing isn't as precise.
Like I said - not dissing the mouse because it certainly has tons of uses, but I do think it's over-used in too many places just because back then it was "the next big thing."
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"Remember your audience: Everyone here is on a tight schedule, often required to work >60 hours per week. Architectures, designs, and code must be clear and understandable. Do not waste our time with your mastery of the latest fancy-boy fad."
On a somewhat more balanced note... There are many very intelligent people who concentrate on their particular areas of study, and technologies that are successful in making information/concepts accessible to busy preoccupied people do have value. And finally, there are people who are well informed that simply do not get some concepts. I am married to a very intelligent person who needs help with complex mechanical concepts, but has me totally beat with her capacity for understanding the human personality. (my wife the doctor :-) )
Yes we live in a complex world, only some of which is unavoidable, and if someone cannot hack it, should do something else. I wonder if after your two weeks of study, you would be able to help review an engine intake design that is resistant to flameout due to high-AOA or evasive maneuvers...
Some thing interesting from the transcript was when someone named Mays commented on a Mac ad:
Here you have a world famous cellist who has spent 30 years of his life learning how to play a complex instrument saying he wants his computer to be "easy to use."
I think that this makes a good point that computers are complex "instruments" as well and should require time and practice to use effectively just as it takes time to play a cello well.
He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments.
That makes him a major player in the development of unilateral repetitive stress injuries, copied-and-pasted spaghetti code monoliths, popup ad windows, the demise of the airline industry, and time-burning blogs (ahem).
I was using NLS to collaborate on a paper using my SDS 940, and it was like beep beep beep beep beep...and then, like half my paper was gone! It was a really good paper!
So I tried uisng my IBM 360, but it was like unngh...so I got on the ARPAnet, and started downloading things for like an hour. Who wants to sit on Christmas afternoon and download OS/360 drivers?
It was kind of...a bummer.
My name is Douglas Engelbart, and I invented the mouse. (Though mine had 3 buttons...)
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
I'll bet he gets loads of props from the CLI lovin' Linux community.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've been looking for non Real format versions of this demo for a while, preferably in mpeg or avi (DivX, whatever) format. Does anyone know if the demo in it's entirety is available in one of these formats?
I first heard about that interview on Engelbart's mailing list. There is a lot more information, maybe 30-40 hours worth, over at Stanford. Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford An In-Depth Look at "The Unfinished Revolution" This colloquium will offer professionals and executives a rare opportunity to listen to and learn from visionary Doug Engelbart as he talks about his life's work, creative process, and his concerns and vision for the future. http://scpd.stanford.edu/sol/courses/proEd/EC/
I saw a video of his demo in a UI class I took in college. The interesting thing about it was that he was using a one-handed keyboard. It essentially had piano-like keys that when pressed down in different patterns would produce different letters. It was quite cool since he could type without taking his hand off mouse (he looked like he was playing a FPS). I remember reading that he thought that the one-handed keyboard would have a much greater impact than the mouse ever would... oh well, it looks like you can lead the invention to water, but you can't make it drink
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
Englebert seems to agree, but I beg to differ. The thing about the cellist is that he spends all his practice time playing the cello. When he uses his computer he wants it to just plain work, quick and easy, so it doesn't eat into his cello time.
There are plenty of opportunities to be a virtuoso at the computer - just learn to program. For everyone else, computer use should be effortless.
Visionaries sitting around Visioning about collective IQ and how backwards and short-sighted everyone else is. If they can't give us a concrete proposal for how exactly computers might work differently, why are they worth interviewing?
What version of Windows are you using?
What version of MSIE?
I have stuck with Win98SE, and will keep using it until I need more than 512MB of RAM, which is unlikely since I don't want the latest bloat from MS. (I am not including my 'servers', which run RH7.1 and often have much more RAM than 512 MB.)
I currently use Mozilla 1.1 for most of my browsing, but I occasionally load MSIE 5.5.
[Off-topic: I need to upgrade Mozilla, since it has memory leaks, especially when moderating Slashdot. Mozilla 1.2 had features I did not want. Mozilla 1.3 seems better. I have converted many acquaintances and almost all of my friends, and they always get the latest version, so I have experimented with them.]
So my usual software is definitely out of date, but I work with PCs running just about anything, including a brand new Windows XP box that arrived 2 weeks ago from Dell. I thought I used the following commands on that PC yesterday.
ALT-SPACE has always been the keyboard command to open the "window" menu. [You can also right-click the taskbar entry, but this is about not using the mouse.]
ALT-SPACE R(estore) changes from full screen to a window.
ALT-SPACE X maximizes the window, which turns off the ability to move and resize. (Why? What if the window is too small or positioned weird? What if the window is completely off the screen? I want to maximize it and then shrink it a little. No can do. I have to "restore" it first to its off-screen position and tiny size. And then I can attempt to make it usable.)
ALT-SPACE N minimizes to the taskbar.
ALT-SPACE M(ove) allows the cursor keys to move the window.
ALT-SPACE S(ize) allows the cursor keys to change the size of a window that MSWindows has not decided shouldn't be changed. (Why aren't all windows resizable? I often want to expand a file browser dialog box so I can see the Details view without horizontal scrolling.)
These keyboard commands are very helpful when you change screen sizes and the window title bar is off the screen. They also help when MSWindows decides to use dialog boxes that do not fit in the current resolution so the OK and Cancel buttons are off the bottom of the screen.
Enjoy.
---
The Preview button adds random spelling errors. So does Submit.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Engelbert? Humpin' his dink? I know him!
F6
DCMonkey
I chose to use phpwiki with mySQL as the backend.
I know I could have just used text documents in folders, or HTML pages, but using phpwiki is much more convienent - since the editor is built-in... and creating a link to an existing topic is as easy as putting brackets around it's page name and I can access my notes from any machine with a web browser and access to the net.
So, when Englebart talks of "knowledge containers" as a way to deal with the ever more complex world we live in... I immediately thought, wow, I already have one of those... "my notes" on my phpwiki site.
I throw these comments out there, in the hope that perhaps someone else seeking a "knowledge container" of their own might check out phpwiki!
If anyone is interested in more on Doug Engelbart you may want to check out the documentary we are making on him, "Invisible Revolution, the Doug Engelbart Story", which has a site at at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ We are in the early, but active stages and interestd in comments and criticism :-)
The one I really liked was the Half Keyboard for Palm, Mac, and PC, which has the QWERT half of a keyboard, and you shift with your thumb on the spacebar to get the YUIOP side, or numlock to get numbers. It's a total no-brainer to understand how to use it, unlike most of the other systems, assuming you already know the standard keyboard well. The small half-keyboard version is only for left-handed typing. For Palm users drawing with a stylus, that's probably correct for most people, but my preferences for PC use are the opposite. I'm right-handed, and type much better with my right hand than my left, while I've gotten very good at left-handed mousing while trying to avoid various RSI problems. They now make a full-sized left-and-right-halves keyboard, which they want $400 for; I don't understand why....
There's also a software version of the Half-keyboard, but at least when it came out, it was more expensive than the hardware version, being marketed toward handicapped business users who could get their companies to pay for them. (Perhaps that also explains the $400 left-and-right-halves.) Sigh. It's not currently on their web site price list. I don't know if the concept's patented, which could interfere with an open-source implementation.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For an excellent history of computers see the well reviewed and thoroughly enjoyable and engaging "Tools for Thought" by Howard Rheingold.
Englebart is prominantly mentioned throughout the book (as he should be). Includes a complete chapter regarding Englebart.
A new edition, print only, includes a revised chapter with 1999 interviews with Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay among others.
Read it. Thank me later.
(I am not H. Rheingold; however, [gratuitous plug] you may find that PurpleSlurple offers utility for reading such a long online text).