Slashdot Mirror
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...
He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments.
I agree wholeheartedly. Well, I'd have put Von Neumann and Harvard in there somewhere, but you're right -- this guy certainly hasn't gotten the recognition that the tone of the article suggests he should have.
He must have kept quiet over the past couple of centuries... if he was that good you'd have expected at least a couple of "I told you so"'s!
btw what's with posting as an AC? I almost missed your post 'cos it was scored 0.
I am artificially intelligent.
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 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.
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.