Page 106 - merged.pdf

•86 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

He was a member of the team at the Stanford Research Institute in the late
1950s and early 1960s. Engelbart was a visionary who started from a theoretical
framework for the ‘co-evolution of human skills knowledge and organisations.’ At
the heart of his vision was the computer, acting as an extension of human commu-
nication capabilities and resource for the ‘augmentation of human intellect’.

In other words he worked on getting the computer out of the hands of the
technicians and into the working hands of the user. So what did the demonstration
contain? Remember that it was 1968 and the computer had had no visibility up until
then outside the air-conditioned computer room.

The demonstration, which lasted for 90 minutes, was for most people their first
glimpse of a networked computer system. This enabled a series of other firsts. It had
the debut of the computer mouse, two-dimensional display editing, hypermedia, (a
foundation stone of the Internet), multiple windows and on-screen video
teleconferencing.

The majority of the demonstration centred round Engelbart using the compu-
ter to plan out a set of things that he had to do later. The list of things was organised,
for example, as a graphical map of where he had to go, connected by the route he
had to take. His shopping list was also organised hierarchically by category and he
could easily expand or elide sections of the hierarchy or move items between sec-
tions.

Key to the human–computer interaction was the fact that the interface was
intimately linked to the work environment and appropriate user-interface devices
were used. His desk and workspace were built around the computer, which was the
focus of attention.

This last aspect eventually found its way into the Macintosh and Microsoft
Windows. The mother of all demos became the standard transition from an ordi-
nary desk into a multi-dimensional, flexible, self-organised workspace.