55 years ago, the ‘Mother of All Demos’ foresaw modern computing
“On Dec. 9, 1968, Oregon-born engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart hosted a computer demonstration so groundbreaking it is known today as the “Mother of All Demos. [...] Early in his career, Engelbart decided that his life’s work would focus on solving humanity’s problems. He recognized that computers could not only help with that work, but also accelerate it. [...] He envisioned computers as communication tools that could help people learn, collaborate and tackle complex problems.”
Douglas Engelbart facts for kids
“Early in his career he decided (1) he would focus his career on making the world a better place; (2) any serious effort [in this pursuit would require harnessing] the collective human intellect of all involved; (3)
if you could dramatically improve how we do that, you'd be boosting every effort on the planet to solve important problems – the sooner the better; (4) computers could be the vehicle for dramatically improving this capability.”
Related Articles: Computer mouse Facts for Kids | History of personal computers facts for kids | the Mother of All Demos | Keyboard facts for kids | Turing Award facts for kids |
Douglas Engelbart - Inventing the 21st Century
In this Podcast, “we look back to the man who wanted to augment human intelligence to help us work together to solve the world's most complex problems, and in doing so invented the 21st Century. How do we get smart enough to solve the really difficult problems? Douglas Engelbart said "the better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better" where our problem-solving abilities are constantly improved, and therefore so is everything we do!"
See also Avail Formats | Show Notes
Extended Mind interview with Donald Clark
“In this episode of Great Minds on Learning, John Helmer interviews Donald Clark exploring The Extended Mind. Where do our thoughts live? And if, as some theorists contend, they do not observe physical limitations, but extends to our technology tools and physical surroundings, what are the implications for learning?” Includes Great Mind Doug Engelbart's vision on collective intelligence.
See also: Episode Notes | Detail: Learning Theorists | Detail: Engelbart on Collective IQ
A Machine for Thinking: How Douglas Engelbart Predicted the Future of Computing
“More than 50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart gave the "Mother of All Demos" that transformed software forever. The computer world has been catching up with his vision ever since.” See Also: About the Hidden Heroes Series
The Public Debut of a Dream
“Doug Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” 60 Years On: In October, 1962, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart published a document that synthesized over a decade of research and careful thought, a document that would illuminate the work he would do for the rest of his career. 'Augmenting Human Intellect' is both a research report and a visionary manifesto for how computers and human beings could co-evolve to foster the highest levels of human flourishing. Engelbart sought to empower humanity’s capabilities to address its most complex problems, and he saw networked computing as an essential part of that capability...”
Improvement communities
“Improving the way we improve is a collective effort with exponential rewards. But why have so few industries embraced it?”
See companion article Collective IQ and Continuous Improvement
Collective IQ and Continuous Improvement
“How do you harness the collective intelligence of a group, solve difficult problems, and share what you learn?”
An excellent distillation and synthesis of Doug Engelbart's driving vision for navigating accelerating change. See companion article Improvement communities
Augmenting the Learning Dialogue Online
A Q&A with Gardner Campbell “We've heard a lot lately about moving the remote learning experience farther away from a training model and closer to a collaborative learning model in which students participate together in the co-creation or discovery of knowledge.
As far back as the 1960s, alongside the work of Doug Engelbart, people have dreamed about ways to augment the knowledge worker, the researcher, the scholar, the faculty, and the student... Today, a conversation about how to do that ”
The Click Heard around the World
“On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute hosted a session at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in which he used the first computer mouse to sweep through a demonstration that became the blueprint for modern computing.”
Related Articles: Tech Suport | How design factored into “the mother of all tech demos”
Culture of Innovation at ARPA & Xerox PARC
“Keynote Speaker Alan Kay presents key lessons learned from the culture within the ARPA community and Xerox PARC that fostered so many technological breakthroughs, in such a short period of time.” Includes learnings from Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect Research Center. Stories that inform future cosmic scale innovators.
Video Contents: 0:01 Introductions | 04:29 Enter Alan Kay | 22:46 Discussing Engelbart |
See also Related Essay: "How?" | Event Site
How? - When “what will it take?” seems beyond possible
“When “what will it take?” seems beyond possible, we need to study how *Immense Challenges* have been successfully dealt with in the past. [...] Need higher levels of qualitatively different thinking than the thinking that caused the challenges, including how to set up and nourish the communities of top people [pursuing the solutions]." *Immense Challenges* call for cosmic vision and collective synergy.
This essay written for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Summit to accompany Alan's session VIDEO: Scale Up the Circular Economy - with Alan Kay
"What Would Doug Engelbart Do?" Ask Organizers of a Silicon Valley Event
“Inspired by the man who showed the way to modern computing, tech-minded experts shared ideas for how to tackle climate change, nuclear proliferation, and broken political systems.”
How design factored into "the mother of all tech demos"
“A crucial, but rarely discussed element of Engelbart’s stagecraft was his custom-built chair. Herman Miller designer Jack Kelley modified an Eames shell chair and affixed a detatchable tray to house a keyboard, a computer mouse, and a keyset.” Jack Kelly recalls the setup for the seminal demo - “I designed the computer chair with a swing-out console because Engelbart liked to work in different attitudes and statures … stand-up, sit down, relax. … How do you solve for that?”
Net@50: Did Engelbart's “Mother of All Demos” Launch the Connected World?
“His goal was building systems to augment human intelligence. His group prototyped much of modern computing (and invented the mouse) along the way”
50 Years Later, We Still Don’t Grasp the Mother of All Demos
“To Engelbart, his work was never about the technology itself, but about helping people work together to solve the world’s biggest problems.”
How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos
“Engelbart’s idea was that computers of the future should be optimized for human needs. [...] They should augment rather than replace the human intellect.”
50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart’s ‘Mother of All Demos’ changed personal technology forever
“Imagine someone demonstrating a jet plane 15 years before Kitty Hawk [or] a smartphone 15 years before the first cellular networks were even launched.”
In One 1968 Presentation, This Inventor Shaped Modern Computing
“Douglas Engelbart’s career was about seeing the possibilities of what computing could do for humanity.”
Here's How To Master The ABCs Of Innovation
“Fortune 500 CEOs cited dealing with the rapid pace of technological change as their "single biggest challenge." Another global survey [...] identified the speed of disruptive innovation as one of the highest risks facing their organizations. [...] Yet, the intense attention on innovation often misses a key element. [While] many companies are paying attention to immediate challenges and opportunities, [...] too few are being innovative in how they innovate. [...] Douglas Engelbart, the noted engineer and inventor, captured the critical difference when he wrote "the key to the long-term viability of an organization is to get better "and better at improving itself." To understand why, take a look at Englebart's framework for the "ABCs of Organizational Improvement."
See this article tweeted by the Author, and trending on Twitter.”
Elephant Footprint: The Vision and Impact of Douglas Engelbart
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DOUG ENGELBART'S VISION AND IMPACT TRANSCENDED HIS COMPUTER MOUSE - “At the time of his passing, Engelbart was frustrated by humans’ failure to prioritize the power of the Creative IQ. His vision was that technology would work with our infinite capacities as humans, not work independently of them.” [ See also: Editor's Note | Inventors Digest - June 2016 Issue ]
Internet Pioneer's Greatest Contribution May Not Be Technological
“Doug Engelbart's greatest breakthrough may be to change how we think, how we learn and innovate, and how we collaborate." The Internet Hall of Fame featured profile on this 2014 Inductee, including how one university is putting his vision to practice in an experimental MOOC and associated Engelbart Scholar Award program.
Innovation Magazine and the Birth of a Buzzword
“Today's technoculture of entrepreneurship and creative problem solving owes much to this 1960s magazine… In the September 1971 Issue, Innovation published one of the earliest profiles of computer visionary Douglas Engelbart. Members could sign up for a seminar with Engelbart in his lab at SRI [to] try out the augmentation system made famous by his 1968 public demonstration, in which he debuted a number of groundbreaking technologies.”
See companion article featuring Doug Engelbart: Toward the Decentralized Intellectual Workshop, by Nilo Lindgren, Innovation, issue 24, April 1971, pages 50-60.
Reflections on our future
This article commemorates Doug's remarks from the Oct 1996 ASIS Conference on global complexity: information, chaos and control, where ASIS honored Doug with a Special Achievement Award. “We at the Bootstrap Institute say the world has one category of people who are operating and another category of activity that's improving the capability to do that work. So we called the first part the “A” activity and the next part the “B.” The “B” is that which is busy trying to improve how capable you can be at “A.” Because we have significantly more challenges coming, we must get a more effective “B” going to cope with that change. To improve the capability for doing “B,” you obviously have to add a “C” to improve your capability to improve...”
Douglas Engelbart’s Unfinished Revolution
“Engelbart’s ideas revolutionized computing and helped shape the modern world. [...] To Engelbart, computers, interfaces, and networks were means to a more important end—amplifying human intelligence to help us survive in the world we’ve created.”
Doug Engelbart's Design for High Performance Innovative Organizations
Change Your Organization's Nervous System - “I have been a fan and follower of Doug Engelbart since I first discovered his work in the early 1970s. After his death in 2013, I revisited a videotaped interview I did with Doug in November of 1991 [in which Doug described] much of his seminal thinking about how to design high performance organizations. [...] In this article, I summarize a few of the high points from that interview.”
Remembering Doug Engelbart, with two talks about his visionary work
“Engelbart was one of those people who imagined the possibility of the Internet as a place where people could work together and push humanity forward. He was ahead of his time not only in what he invented, but in how he thought about the process of creation. Digital collaboration, crowdsourcing, group innovation — these are concepts Engelbart championed 60 years ago that are still relevant (yet, importantly, not a matter of course) today.”
References: The Demo | Ian Ritchie TED Talk | Peter Hirshberg TED Talk | Augmenting Human Intellect
A few words on Doug Engelbart
“People often compare Engelbart's work to today's tech, but that misses the point. Ignore today; just think about it in terms of his goals.”
Improve Your Ecosystem's Ability to Tackle Complex Issues
“For internetworked organizations [...] there’s also a robust body of proven practices that reminds us how to accelerate our capacity for innovation as a group of people. Many of the basic principles for “bootstrapping innovation” among people who are working together online (and offline) to address complex issues were invented and practiced by Doug Engelbart. [...] At our recent Visionaries’ meeting, Christina Engelbart, Doug’s daughter, reminded us that her father’s life work revolved around helping groups of people tackle really complex issues.”
Celebrating the man who invented the mouse
“The mouse was merely a byproduct of Engelbart's larger vision, said his daughter, Christina Engelbart [...] "That was what the public recognizes as a great innovation that's really had a huge impact on everyone. But truly his greatest innovation of all was the vision and the strategic organizing principles that catapulted the innovation of his lab and that could catapult the work today if it was applied and harnessed in teams and organizations” Watch the Stanford News Report
Education, Information Technologies, and the Augmentation of Human Intellect
“Capturing a moment in which participatory culture offered a glimpse of ways in which creation, communication, reflection, and awareness might be part of the same complex web of activity, a kind of mindfulness that would gain purpose and direction from opportunities for creation and sharing. That mindfulness would not happen automatically. [...] But participatory culture within environments rich with integrated domains and structures encouraging reflection and mindfulness can set up all sorts of lovely feedback loops, reciprocalities, and serendipitous encounters.”
The Click Heard Round the World
“It was December 1968. An obscure scientist from Stanford Research Institute stood before a hushed San Francisco crowd and blew every mind in the room. His 90-minute demo rolled out virtually all that would come to define modern computing: videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a "mouse." Doug Engelbart tells writer Ken Jordan what it felt like to launch the point-and-click revolution 15 years before the Mac.”
Inventors discuss their sources of inspiration
Featuring a panel discussion of five inventors whose dreams transformed computing, medicine and consumer products -- Douglas Englebart, Brian Hubert, Raymond Kurzweil, Robert Langer, and Steve Wozniak -- the event celebrates the publication of Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse (MIT Press). 'Invention in technology is a form of magic,' said Kurzweil, 'in seeing the leap from a dry formula to an impact on people's lives.' Engelbart recommended that next generation inventors nurture collectively their 'dreams about how much people can improve. The mouse was just a windshield wiper. There are urgent big problems that have to be dealt with collectively.'”
Watch the Panel Discussion | Browse Book Review