Ever see the “Mother of all Demos”?

In 1968 Douglas C. Engelbart, along with a team of 17 researchers at Stanford, in a 90 minute taped demonstration, showed us what was then the future – which is now the present (and soon to be the past?) – hypertext, gui based interaction, online collaboration including email, and more.

Stanford has a terrific page on the demo, including video clips of it broken down by time and topic, and a single clip of the whole thing. If you’ve never seen this before, take the time, scroll to the bottom of this, and watch beginning to end. It’s not called “The Mother of all Demos” for nothing.

I’ve watched this a few times over the years and I keep coming back to it and being blown away. How far have we gone? How far have we not? There has been much added to the mix these past ten years, but it was a long way from there to here.

Related:

PhillyCHI

Flash, UI, and football fans check out “Inside the Playbook” at NYTimes

The NYTimes uses Flash to produce analysis of each match-up in the NFL playoffs and a fun game to predict winners.

Here is one example of upcoming game analysis: Inside the Playbook: Philadelphia at Minnesota

Here is the predict the winner game: Inside the Playbook Challenge

And go Eagles!

CNN gets rid of the crawl

I expected this to be bigger news in my circles, but it hasn’t registered. CNN has rejected the news crawl for a far less busy headline flip in its news broadcasts. The new UI makes it far easier to absorb the news broadcast without constant distraction and sometimes even helps to clarify whatever it is that is being reported. Great job CNN.

NYTimes: The Flipper Challenges the Crawl