Douglas Engelbart
Born 100 Years Ago Today
30 Jan 1925
“By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.” — Douglas Engelbart (1962)
An essay on Engelbart’s motivation, with links to video and other historical sources on his life and work.
#Engelbart #hypertext #botd
https://tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog2386
Happy Mother Of All Demos to those who celebrate. #engelbart
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/MotherOfAllDemos
"Doug Engelbart sat under a twenty-two-foot-high video screen, ‘dealing lightning with both hands.’ At least that's the way it seemed to Chuck Thacker, a young Xerox PARC computer designer who was later shown a video of the demonstration that changed the course of the computer world.” — John Markoff
9:00 AM PST 9 Dec, 2008
#Engelbart #Hypertext #UX
#dougday
http://tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog912
Engelbart's law: the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential. On this 55th anniversary of his seminal "mother of all demos", Douglas Engelbart's observation that we can improve on our improvements remains valid, but I also wonder if we're entering a new phase of improvement wrt LLMs where the ability to improve will not just be in the sphere of humanity, but also in the sphere of machines as co-creators.
@bosak 
Doug #Engelbart
1968 "Mother of All Demos" with Doug Engelbart & Team (complete) [re-mastered]
Courtesy of the Doug Engelbart Institute YouTube channel. The video’s description includes reference links and transcript.
@bosak Doug #Engelbart
“The complexity of problems facing mankind is outpacing our ability to solve them”
— Doug Engelbart
I like Doug’s Introduction to ‘Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework’. He referred to it as the ‘bible’ of his research and explanation of everything he hoped to accomplish.
Doug was like a biblical prophet too, with a soft voice, kind smile, but firm clear vision.
Augment report: https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html#1a1
Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" was presented 55 years ago today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
It changed the way people thought about computers in the 1960s.
Before Jobs, Before Altman, there was Engelbart.
#TicketToWatch The Augmentation of Douglas #Engelbart | Full Documentary
via #ChronoMedia https://mprove.de/chrono?q=37.78903,-122.40419&z=13.03&t=0&m=XYarpanet1969&o=0.4&i=ChronoMedia
piped: https://piped.video/watch?v=_7ZtISeGyCY&list=PLA7F3A83431B9C10F&index=6
uTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7ZtISeGyCY&list=PLA7F3A83431B9C10F&index=6
Today 55 years ago the modern world began.
#MotherOfAllDemos #DougEngelbart #DouglasEngelbart #Engelbart #BillEnglish #ARPA #AugmentingHumanIntellect #IntelligenceAmplification #IA #ManComputerSymbiosis #Mouse #ComputerMouse #HyperMedia #HyperText #ComputerGraphics #PersonalComputing #PersonalComputer
#ComputerHistory #ComputingHistory #History
Dealing lightning with both hands... Dec 9, 1968
"Doug Engelbart sat under a twenty-two-foot-high video screen, ‘dealing lightning with both hands.’ At least that's the way it seemed to Chuck Thacker, a young Xerox PARC computer designer who was later shown a video of the demonstration that changed the course of the computer world.” — John Markoff, 'What the Dormouse Said'
@lori I'm mostly just paraphrasing what the I recall being described as results from user group studies at SRI were on pointing devices.
The mouse wasn't the only thing they tried. Light pens predated the mouse (e.g. in Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI )
My understanding is that Bill English/ARC/The Augment group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) under Doug(las) Engelbart experimented with various pointing devices, before settling on a 3 button mouse.
Some iterations had fewer (perhaps even no? I don't recall) buttons, some had as many as five buttons I seem to recall?
They even purportedly experimented with a pointing that was driven by knee movements (presumably to allow the hands to be free for other things, though perhaps this may have also been useful for accessibility much in the way there are some alternative pointing devices based upon eye tracking or breathing in more recent decades)
In SRI's studies apparently 3 buttons was considered ideal by most users?
Admittedly, they experimented with a lot of other things when it came to user input too.
For example, instead of relying solely on a QWERTY keyboard layout, NLS used a "chorded" keyboard (image attached).
Similar to playing notes on piano keys, or stenographer keyboards, multiple keys could be held simultaneously, to produce different characters.
Some years ago, an app was made available for mobile touch screen devices, by Adam Kumpf from Teague Labs but that app did not keep up & isn't in app stores anymore. (remnant: https://www.fastcompany.com/1669042/a-famous-inventors-forgotten-idea-a-one-handed-touch-screen-keyboard).
Others made an interface for the original hardware to an iPad (e.g: https://valerielandau.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/engelbart-typing-on-the-ipad-with-the-chorded-keyset/ ).
Presumably due to the versatility of the chorded keyset (typically used by the left hand) excessive buttons on the mouse (typically used by the right hand) made it such that 3 buttons seemed sufficient?
@doriantaylor Yes! Reminds me of
CODIAK process, ‘Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware’, Douglas Engelbart (1992)
https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/116/#6
[Alt text includes Engelbart’s summary description]
Create tools and then use those tools to improve the tools. As the tools improve, they make it possible to make new, more useful tools.
Doug #Engelbart called the approach #bootstrapping , named for the bootstrap circuit in radar systems.
Doug Engelbart 1962 research report "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"
https://framework.thoughtvectors.net/
Mike Amundsen 
