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Switch Interviews Douglas Engelbart 110

Posted by timothy from the well-worth-reading dept.
noema writes "If you don't know Douglas Engelbart you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect. He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments. He is a well known WYSIWYG and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos is his thing too." Here's a link to the transcript itself, which is presented as a PDF.
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Switch Interviews Douglas Engelbart More

Switch Interviews Douglas Engelbart

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  • Good grief... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:08AM (#5734311)
    ...I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?

    Seems almost hoaxish...
    • What can I say? Parallel Universes Are Real! :)
      (No it's not a hoax though - the demo that is)
    • You know what they say...if it's not on Oprah, its not worth knowing. Try changing the channel.

    • Demo was not a hoax and there were precursors (Score:5, Informative)

      by Futurian ( 152084 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:43AM (#5734406)
      Anonymous Coward said: ...I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?
      What Engelbart accomplished is extraordinary but there were significant precursors to his work. In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a system called Memex that contained a preliminary form of pointers between textual data items and photographic data items. His proposal used "microfilm replicas" because that was the most advanced technology available to embody his ideas. Click here [theatlantic.com] to read his article entitled "As We May Think". For a very broadly conceived "Timeline of Hypertext History" click here [robotwisdom.com].

    • Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by citog ( 206365 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:46AM (#5734416)
      You can read a copy of his 1962 paper at http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/EngelbartPaper s/B5_F18_ConceptFrameworkInd.html [stanford.edu]

    • Re:Good grief... (Score:5, Funny)

      by muyuubyou ( 621373 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @06:39AM (#5734631)
      ...and I thought Al Gore invented all that stuff.

      You never know.
    • I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?

      A typical Computer Science curriculum has no history of computing component, but this history is taught in computer literacy classes. I hated teaching those classes, but they introduced me to people such as Englebart and Zuse [google.com].
    • ...I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?

      Probably it's because you've never read a decent book on history of computers. Suggested reading: "Fire In The Valley", Freiberger & Swaine. Or if you wan't to know the maccentric point of view, "Insanely Great" by Stephen Levy.
      • For a view specifically of the early days of the internet (back when it was the ARPAnet, and even a bit before), you might also try "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Kate Haffner and Matt Lyon.
      • A-fucking-men.
        (Ewwwwwww. I take it back. {But not in the back.})
        Crap.
        Well, it's the thought process, so I'll leave it.

        I love _Fire in the Valley_. Love it.
        Also, try _Dealers in Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age_, _Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet_, _The Second Coming of Steve Jobs_, and, as some other poster mentioned, _Hackers_.

        Man, those were some heady times.
        My favorite part of _Fire in the Valley_:

        Time and again, crazy dreamers had run up against resistance from accept
    • For those who, like me, really really detest streaming realplayer, here is the whole demo in downloadable form [ed-debating.org.uk].

  • Douglas Engelbart and Bill Gates... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:14AM (#5734329) Journal
    My internal parser core dumped while reading the article, so I fiddled around a bit, replacing some words and names here and there...

    "If you don't know (Bill Gates) you don't know the history of computers. Switch has published a transcript of an intense session with him about his visions on enhancing the human intellect (by switching from the Mac to the Windows PC).

    He (Bill Gates) was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments (besides COM, .Net, Internet, WiFi, USB..).

    He is a well known (command-prompt) and ease-of-use critic. The Mother of all Demos (which he gave during the anti-trust trial) is his thing too." ... ah! now it all begins to make sense.
    • Its all lies! Everyone knows Apple Computers invented the GUI!!! M$ ripped off their idea!!! And they invented the Operating System!!!! And Microprocessors- Intel ripped off Apple too!!!! And everyone knows that lamps ripped off their look from iMacs!! And Apple invented pastel colors, too!!

  • Douglas Engelbart (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:21AM (#5734349)
    Douglas Engelbart...Since I've never heard the name before, scanning the headlines I read his last name, and was duly frightened that /. was about to post an article which had anything at all to do with Englebert Humperdink...

    • Re:Douglas Engelbart (Score:5, Informative)

      by 6hill ( 535468 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:07AM (#5734455)
      Well for goodness sakes. This is a guy who has his own category in Google Directory, under Computers, History, Pioneers. See? [google.com]

      While he has admittedly been standing on the shoulders of giants, there is also a smattering of true visionary in all the things he has done. The Salon article on him [salon.com], although old, is a fascinating read.

      • But.. but the list includes Bill Gates [google.com] too!

        What do I make of that?! :-p
        • Well, I guess to make onto the list, you don't need to be famous. Just infamous. It can be said that Bill is a visionary -- his visualisations of piles of money have worked rather well so far ;P.
          • It can be said that Bill is a visionary -- his visualisations of piles of money have worked rather well so far

            Oh, stop it. I despise Bill as much as the next guy, but clearly Bill was a visionary in his time. At a time when everyone else (Apple, IBM, etc.) thought the way to Get Ahead was by being a hardware manufacturer, Bill had the visionary insight that making the software was where the money was going to be.

  • huh? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I obviously know nothing about the history of computers. Anyone care to explain? For me it was like Charles Babbage, fastforward to Alan Turing, fastforward to mainframes.

    These elitist write-ups really bug me. Honestly, what's so hard about saying "Doug Engelbert, inventor of the *whatever*, etc.."???

    • Re:huh? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments.

    • Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nebbian ( 564148 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:01AM (#5734442) Homepage Journal
      I agree wholeheartedly. Well, I'd have put Von Neumann and Harvard in there somewhere, but you're right -- this guy certainly hasn't gotten the recognition that the tone of the article suggests he should have.

      He must have kept quiet over the past couple of centuries... if he was that good you'd have expected at least a couple of "I told you so"'s!

      btw what's with posting as an AC? I almost missed your post 'cos it was scored 0.

    • "Honestly, what's so hard about saying "Doug Engelbert, inventor of the *whatever*, etc.."???"

      OK, Doug Engelbart not only invented the mouse, but also what we today refer to as word processing, hypertext (weblinks) flexible view control (complete control of the contents for the author, little of which is left today), multiple windows, integrated hypermedia email, document version control, shared-screen teleconferencing, computer-aided meetings and more.

      In two words; 'interactive computing', unlike t

  • Highlights (Score:3, Informative)

    by Omniscient Ferret ( 4208 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:42AM (#5734403)
    I was looking for a non-Real copy of that lecture, and came across highlight excerpts [visuallee.com] on that server, courtesy of curiousLee. [visuallee.com]

  • Hmm he's no Ellen Feiss (Score:3, Funny)

    by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:31AM (#5734503)
    He's no Ellen Feiss, that's for sure.

    Now where's my tshirt.

  • Damnit (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by ciryon ( 218518 )
    I first thought this was an interview with some of the switchers [apple.com] in the Apple ads. Kinda... bummer.

    Ciryon

  • A lot of his innovations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:44AM (#5734528) Journal
    also I think became too pervalent for their own good...

    Take, say, the mouse... it is good for some things, but UI has became WAY too dependent on the darn thing. (Okay, I admit context sensitive menues was not one of his wrongdoings, but nontheless it was not an outcome that surprised anyone).

    For WYSIWYG, it's not necessary for many things you do. In fact - it is completely for the purpose of putting things onto paper. When you take away that premises, a lot of innovative UI can get done (3D desktops, let's say).

    I personally believe that a lot of stuff has really became like the iMac design - way too popular and put into way too many places. For stuff like word processing, I would prefer for it to be navigatable without myself moving my hand to the mouse at all. THAT would be peak efficiency.

    (Yes I know mouse is very important for anything graphic - but admit it GUI is not the most efficient interface; it may be the most intuitive, but often you get a lot done a lot faster with just a keyboard - if a computer was designed for it. Too bad so few things are these days.

    • Re:A lot of his innovations (Score:5, Insightful)

      by radish ( 98371 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @06:06AM (#5734561) Homepage
      For stuff like word processing, I would prefer for it to be navigatable without myself moving my hand to the mouse at all. THAT would be peak efficiency.

      Never heard of keyboard shortcuts then? Any decent WP app (actually any decent app period) should be totally keyboard navigable, if it's not complain to the designers. The mouse is not a replacement for the keyboard it's an augmentation.

      • short cuts not enough (Score:3, Interesting)

        by lingqi ( 577227 )
        I know and I use a lot of shortcuts. However, a lot of things you just can't do with keyboard because the features were never designed with keyboard in mind.

        I will use MS word for and example because I am using one right now.

        Take, say, window split. you can split the window, but you can't switch between them.

        Another thing might be putting in tab stops.

        How about easily change font? Now - I said *EASILY*. I wouldn't even mind if it was a simple something that let me get to the toolbar (come on - that's th
        • I'm not excusing them - but in reference to your font problem - perhaps you are doing something wrong if you require changing fonts all the time - I can't think off the top of my head any time you would want to keep changing the fonts like you imply.
          • I'll give you an example.

            In Word, anyway, whenever you open up something like a text-box, you go back to the default format by microsoft, and normal.dot don't do jack.

            so if you open a lot of text boxes (which, btw, is another impossibility without using the mouse - but you can't help it because a lot of stuff you can't do with tables, or not tables in Word anyway), you will be changing fonts ALL the time. (Of course, you can copy and paste existing boxes - but then you have to resize them and replace the
      • From an engineer's viewpoint there are two sides to this.

        WP as such is irrelevant. The documents that we use are say spreadsheets, program writing environments, and CAD/CAE

        I suggest that spreadsheets and program writing are not that much better served by the mouse than by cursor keys, but I cannot fathom how to run a decent 3d CAE environment other than via a pointer.

        • I know what you mean. However please consider an engineering tool no less powerful, completely text based if you want: SPICE.

          Everything you ever want to do in Spice can be created in a netlist, and the result is still the same.

          Besides, for when I was doing a little bit of modelling (not like 3DS / Bryce where precision don't matter so much), I typed in coordinates for a large majority of the points anyway (AutoCAD used to have a "line here there" command, IIRC?) because mousing isn't as precise.

          Like I sa
          • (AutoCAD used to have a "line here there" command, IIRC?)

            Speaking as a college student who is forced to use AutoCAD (while being a CS major) I can tell you it still does.

            • Come on then, tell the story. Why is a CS major using Autocad? Are you designing the buildings to house your new supercomputer?

              It's one of those programs that is OK when you are used to it, but, if you were to design a CAD system from scratch, now, you wouldn't do it that way.

          • I typed in coordinates for a large majority of the points anyway (AutoCAD used to have a "line here there" command, IIRC?) because mousing isn't as precise.

            AutoCAD has some really nifty point-snapping controls. When I used to do architectural drafting, at the worst I'd have to type in half the coordinates I needed (and fill in the rest). Going back to the parent post, it is also an application that would benefit enormously from a better-designed right-click context sensetive menu (maybe it already has, I

        • You've got a point with CAD & other design stuff, the mouse/trackball/pen/puck is pretty useful there. Having said that the keyboard has some advantages like more precise control. I use photoshop quite a bit and using the cursor keys to nudge a pixel at a time is invaluable.
      • Gee just use Emacs :-) (ducks quickly for cover)
      • > (actually any decent app period) should be totally keyboard navigable

        I tried to tell that to the GIMP developers but they told me to fuck off.
      • Two words: Internet Explorer.

        The old IEs were. Hit alt, and it gets you up to the File menu. Left and Right would cycle menus. They still do, except now since the menu is another toolbar, you can't access the Windows system menu in the upper left. Therefore, if I want to move the window without using the mouse, as far as I know, I'm S.O.L. Now, granted, the times when I want to do this are few and far between. I mean, a mouse makes sense for moving a window around. But it's the principle. They *destroyed*
        • What version of Windows are you using?
          What version of MSIE?

          I have stuck with Win98SE, and will keep using it until I need more than 512MB of RAM, which is unlikely since I don't want the latest bloat from MS. (I am not including my 'servers', which run RH7.1 and often have much more RAM than 512 MB.)

          I currently use Mozilla 1.1 for most of my browsing, but I occasionally load MSIE 5.5.

          [Off-topic: I need to upgrade Mozilla, since it has memory leaks, especially when moderating Slashdot. Mozilla 1.2 had fe
    • If you find menues inefficient, you would enjoy the interaction system built by Doug. People remember the mouse, but forget the chording keyboard, which was a natural companion for the other hand Using chords, users could issue commands seamlessly while working with the mouse and without requiring any of the unfortunate focus shifts innate in the WIMP interface of today.

      Douglas Engelbart has had a profund influence on modern computing (even if most people do not recognise his name), and has an award name
    • "Take, say, the mouse... it is good for some things, but UI has became WAY too dependent on the darn thing." Doug definitively agrees with this. He is a great proponent of multiple levels of users interfaces; simple for beginners, but as sophisticated as a sophisticated user demands. We are definitively stuck on the 'simple' end these days with the Mac & Windows. Mac & Windows? Would that be Macdows?

  • Journo's stupidity bugs me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @06:34AM (#5734625)
    "Slayton: ... about knowledge and organizations. If I think about an
    airplane, the manufacture of an airplane, the first thing that occurs to
    me is that no one knows how an aircraft gets built. No one. There's
    no one that knows how to build an airplane anymore because the
    artifact of the airplane is so complex and involves so many people that
    that knowledge is dispersed. It doesn't belong to one person and it
    probably doesn't belong to the group. It belongs to the interactions or
    the associations between people and between organizations. That's a
    such a different idea about knowledge as much as it is a phenomena
    that our culture has found ourselves in more recently because of what
    we produce. We continue to produce a more complex world..."

    Well that's you buddy. Real engineers /do/ know how complex things are built. I can't, this minute, tell you how an engine management computer works (I do suspensions, for now), but you can bet that if I needed to, inside two weeks I would. Knowledge is dispersed inside an organisation, but if the chief engineers don't know what is going on then the whole edifice will do a Saddam.

    This whole 'we are ants powerless in the face of the complexity of modern technology' crap gives me the irrits. Just because you are a word mangler who couldn't do a technical degree doesn't mean the rest of us are that stupid.

    • Re:Journo's stupidity bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Styx ( 15057 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @06:55AM (#5734680) Homepage

      I thinks his point was, more likely, that no single person knows everything about our modern extremly complex systems. Even a chief engineer wouldn't (realisticly!) be able to wrap his head around all the minute details needed to build a 747. And why should he have to? He has specialists who understand all the minute details. He can concern himself with the objectives the contruction process has to achive, drawing on his specialists when he needs to.

      You're not powerless, just because you can't know everything there is to how about everything, on a sufficiently large-scale project.

    • Now that's a "helpful" attitude (not)! When I participate in co-workers architecture, design and implementation reviews, I have a favorite comment:

      "Remember your audience: Everyone here is on a tight schedule, often required to work >60 hours per week. Architectures, designs, and code must be clear and understandable. Do not waste our time with your mastery of the latest fancy-boy fad."

      On a somewhat more balanced note... There are many very intelligent people who concentrate on their particular are

    • I don't know if any one person can understand the entire specs for an airplane (my guess would be yes), but I'm sure no one person can understand *everything* that goes into one -- metalurgy, fuel refinement, internals of the integrated chips that run the electronics, etc.

      It all depends on what you count as parts of an airplane's design

    • There is no single person who knows how to build even something as simple as a pencil.

      http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html [econlib.org]

  • Computers too complex (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mufasio ( 304185 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @08:17AM (#5735095)
    Some thing interesting from the transcript was when someone named Mays commented on a Mac ad:
    Here you have a world famous cellist who has spent 30 years of his life learning how to play a complex instrument saying he wants his computer to be "easy to use."

    I think that this makes a good point that computers are complex "instruments" as well and should require time and practice to use effectively just as it takes time to play a cello well.
    • OK, so when are you going to sell out Carnegie Hall with your mad GUI navigation skills? ;)

    • Cello (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      that computers are complex "instruments" as well and should require time and practice to use effectively

      Englebert seems to agree, but I beg to differ. The thing about the cellist is that he spends all his practice time playing the cello. When he uses his computer he wants it to just plain work, quick and easy, so it doesn't eat into his cello time.

      There are plenty of opportunities to be a virtuoso at the computer - just learn to program. For everyone else, computer use should be effortless.

    • What the hell is wrong with someone wanting a computer to be "easy to use"? Their computer is a tool. They want to spend time with other things (i.e., the cello), not learning their computer.
    • The difference is that most people don't have to use a cello at work.

      Computers should be (optionally) easy to use, given how prevalent they are.
  • He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI, teleconferencing and hyperdocuments.
    That makes him a major player in the development of unilateral repetitive stress injuries, copied-and-pasted spaghetti code monoliths, popup ad windows, the demise of the airline industry, and time-burning blogs (ahem).

  • Switch? (Score:2, Funny)

    by MarsCtrl ( 255543 )
    I was using NLS to collaborate on a paper using my SDS 940, and it was like beep beep beep beep beep...and then, like half my paper was gone! It was a really good paper!

    So I tried uisng my IBM 360, but it was like unngh...so I got on the ARPAnet, and started downloading things for like an hour. Who wants to sit on Christmas afternoon and download OS/360 drivers?

    It was kind of...a bummer.

    My name is Douglas Engelbart, and I invented the mouse. (Though mine had 3 buttons...)

  • He did what now? (Score:3, Funny)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @09:02AM (#5735412) Homepage Journal
    "He was a major player in the development of the mouse, cut-and-paste, multi-window GUI..."

    I'll bet he gets loads of props from the CLI lovin' Linux community.

  • I first heard about that interview on Engelbart's mailing list. There is a lot more information, maybe 30-40 hours worth, over at Stanford. Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford An In-Depth Look at "The Unfinished Revolution" This colloquium will offer professionals and executives a rare opportunity to listen to and learn from visionary Doug Engelbart as he talks about his life's work, creative process, and his concerns and vision for the future. http://scpd.stanford.edu/sol/courses/proEd/EC/
  • I saw a video of his demo in a UI class I took in college. The interesting thing about it was that he was using a one-handed keyboard. It essentially had piano-like keys that when pressed down in different patterns would produce different letters. It was quite cool since he could type without taking his hand off mouse (he looked like he was playing a FPS). I remember reading that he thought that the one-handed keyboard would have a much greater impact than the mouse ever would... oh well, it looks like
    • A friend of mine has one of these. He was actually around Engelbart and the PARC folks in those days, and used to write code using the thing. The five keys plus the three buttons on the mouse give you (surprise) a nifty analog 8-bit encoding mechanism. According to him, good coders could really fly once they got up to speed on the system. I might cook up something like this out of an old synth, since I can move about an order of magnitude more efficiently on a piano than on a terminal ;-)
    • There have been a variety one-handed keyboards over the years, doing various chord things. Some of them are ergonomically hand-molded for various configurations, whether desktop or carry-around.

      The one I really liked was the Half Keyboard [halfkeyboard.com] for Palm, Mac, and PC, which has the QWERT half of a keyboard, and you shift with your thumb on the spacebar to get the YUIOP side, or numlock to get numbers. It's a total no-brainer to understand how to use it, unlike most of the other systems, assuming you already

  • I've implemented a knowledge container for myself on a web server... so I have a place to easily create "notes" about stuff I need to know and reference.

    I chose to use phpwiki [sourceforge.net] with mySQL [mysql.com] as the backend.

    I know I could have just used text documents in folders, or HTML pages, but using phpwiki is much more convienent - since the editor is built-in... and creating a link to an existing topic is as easy as putting brackets around it's page name and I can access my notes from any machine with a web browser an

  • If anyone is interested in more on Doug Engelbart you may want to check out the documentary we are making on him, "Invisible Revolution, the Doug Engelbart Story", which has a site at at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ We are in the early, but active stages and interestd in comments and criticism :-)

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