The Mother of All Demos
“If history is any indication, we should assume that any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old!”
On the 9th of December 1968, a humble computer engineer named Douglas Engelbart walked onto the stage of the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.
He was there to deliver a live ninety-minute public demonstration to a room of 1000 computer experts.
By the time he had finished, he had completely shattered their perception of what a computer was.
At the time, computers were massive, room-sized machines operated exclusively by nerdy programmers.
Nobody could see a role for them outside of performing calculations in a company’s basement.
So when Engelbart sat down at a custom desk equipped with a screen, a keyboard, and a strange, hand-carved wooden box, all eyes in the audience fell upon him.
In the box was a pair of metal wheels that allowed him to move a cursor around on the screen.
He called it a ‘mouse’.
Over the next hour and a half, Engelbart used his prototype system to unveil a series of scarcely believable technical breakthroughs.
He demonstrated real-time video conferencing, hyperlinks, collaborative word processing and displayed interactive windows on a graphical interface.
Those watching were transfixed, unable to believe what they had witnessed.
Engelbart had just mapped out the future of computing.
But then 30 years passed before they became a commercial reality.
Why?
It took this long for everything to align with Engelbart’s vision.
The consumer market wasn’t there, microchips were too expensive, and the internet didn’t exist.
The technologist Bill Buxton termed this slow, decades-long development path ‘The Long Nose of Innovation’.
The lesson?
Truly valuable and creative ideas are rarely an overnight success.
They’re developed over the years, until everything finally falls into place.
To watch Doug’s entire presentation click here.
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