The Unfinished Revolution

Thirty years ago Doug Engelbart gave "the mother of all demos," showing a windows interface and the mouse.

David Needle, special to PC World

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On December 9, 1968, Engelbart and colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute wowed a San Francisco crowd with what one pundit calls "the mother of all demos." Engelbart gave the first public demonstration of a computer that offered a windows interface, videoconferencing, black on white text, context-sensitive help--and a primitive mouse.

Although the demo system was attached to a remote mainframe computer, it sparked other research efforts that led to the development of personal computers, the graphical user interface, and more-advanced networks. In fact, Engelbart's network at SRI was hooked up to the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The 72-year-old inventor was honored here at Stanford University on Wednesday for his many pioneering efforts in computers.

Alan Kay, a Fellow and Vice President of Research and Development at Disney, said the Engelbart event thirty years ago "was like Moses opening up the Red Sea." Kay was one of the founders of Xerox PARC and is widely credited with developing the concept of personal computing as well as inventing the overlapping window interface and modern object-oriented programming.

Engelbart "reset the whole conception of what was reasonable," Kay declared.

Still Wanted: Connected Community

But Engelbart said he's disappointed there hasn't been more progress creating a connected community that could work collectively to solve society's problems. "If we have only one model [the PC], we won't get evolution," said Engelbart.

One of the problems with technology today, noted Engelbart, is that products seem to be developed simply because they can be. "When a groupware vendor wants to show a fancy demo, that's not good enough," said Engelbart. "He should be able to show how your organization can actually benefit from using the product."

Hypermedia crusader Ted Nelson spoke glowingly of Engelbart's achievements and was similarly critical of the computer industry's progress. Nelson said the computer has not met its fundamental goal of simulating or improving on paper. "At least with paper you can easily flip through a bunch of pages," said Nelson. "Using a computer to find anything is like opening a packing crate." Nelson is critical of most modern software applications, which he says were designed for clerks and engineers, "but not for people who think."

Jaron Lanier, considered the father of virtual reality, called Engelbart the father of humanistic computing for his advocacy of making technology work for the greater good. "Technology scares a lot of people," said Lanier.

Engelbart's ideas, while influential, were stymied by the conventional wisdom that the best use for computers was to automate office tasks. "That notion killed us," recalled Engelbart. "I didn't see the computer as something to help us do what we already did, but to go beyond that."

That's one of the reasons the event was called "Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution."

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