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Switch Interviews Douglas Engelbart

Posted by timothy on from the well-worth-reading dept.

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.

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Highlights by Omniscient+Ferret · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was looking for a non-Real copy of that lecture, and came across highlight excerpts on that server, courtesy of curiousLee.

  2. Demo was not a hoax and there were precursors by Futurian · · Score: 4, Informative
    Anonymous Coward said: ...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?
    What Engelbart accomplished is extraordinary but there were significant precursors to his work. In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a system called Memex that contained a preliminary form of pointers between textual data items and photographic data items. His proposal used "microfilm replicas" because that was the most advanced technology available to embody his ideas. Click here to read his article entitled "As We May Think". For a very broadly conceived "Timeline of Hypertext History" click here.
  3. Re:Douglas Engelbart by 6hill · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well for goodness sakes. This is a guy who has his own category in Google Directory, under Computers, History, Pioneers. See?

    While he has admittedly been standing on the shoulders of giants, there is also a smattering of true visionary in all the things he has done. The Salon article on him, although old, is a fascinating read.

  4. Re:huh? by Dahan · · Score: 2, Informative
    I'm not the orignial poster, but sometimes it's better to post as AC because moderators are usually morons who mod down 50% of the posts as redundant, even if it isn't.

    Don't be so concerned about being modded down... it's only a few karma points (which you'll soon get back if you post something good).