Steve Jobs presenting iPhone to the world in 2007 sparked a revolution in how we use technology and smartphone became a large part of people's lives (sometimes even more than the computers). Many things we know about mobile phones came from that presentation. There were others who were envisioning similar things and and it's not like Apple invented touch screens. But when you look at mobile phones before iPhone and after iPhone, you can see the influence or at least the impact it had.
There is a tech demo that was so revolutionary to the point it makes Steve Jobs presenting iPhone on January 9th, 2007 at Macworld convention seem almost ordinary. I am making a very bold claim. Yet that was the truth which was demonstrated to the world on December 9th, 1968.
The Mother of All Demos
That is the best way to describe the NLS Demo. The name is fitting and I don't even want to go one by one and describe what was not in the NLS Demo. All of this was demonstrated to the public before Moon Landing and we have already come 55 years since the Demo. Technology has been the most rapidly developing are of human civilization. What was at the bleeding edge few 5 years ago could be unusable today. Many things that were part of NLS Demo 55 years ago have kept up with the times (in a general sense).
The gist of how computers are used today was demonstrated on December 9th, 1968. People at the time did not pay enough attention. They probably didn't even get what was happening. Looks at the NLS Demo today and you may feel as if it is from 80s or 90s.
The HD Remaster is presented by Doug Engelbart Institute which is doing some valuable work to make sure the ideas and value of Douglas Engelbart remains known to the world. People know about the contributions of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. How many of you had even heard about Douglas Engelbart?
The Augmentation of Douglas Engelbart | Full Documentary
If you are reading through the article without watching the videos and have limited time, I recommend you first take a look at the NLS Demo itself. The documentary spends more time on what other people think about Douglas Engelbart. If you watch "The Mother of All Demos", you will see ordinary things such as
- The Mouse
- Word Processing + Document Editing
- Copy/Paste
- Organizing Digital Information
- Hyperlinks (Internet is Made of These)
- Real Time Collaboration
- Video Conferencing (Zoom in 1968)
- WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You Get) Paradigm
Doug Engelbart: “The Augmented Knowledge Workshop”
The following video was recorded on January 9th, 1986 and it was hosted by Xerox Corporation (which is where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gained inspiration from). NLS Demo was 17 years and 2 months ago and yet he is talking about the same things from 1968. The society came in line with his vision only a few years ago.
Douglas Carl Engelbart died on July 2nd, 2013. I wish he got to live at least a few more years because we were barely starting to make NLS Demo into an everyday thing. At least he did live long enough to see smartphones which was not something he predicted half a century ago. Considering how ahead the time Doug Engelbart was, I wouldn't be surprised if had come up with the smartphone in 90s.
Envision A Better World
It is possible for a human being to be half a century ahead of time even within the rapidly moving space of technology. It is reasonable to expect visionaries to think far ahead of what most people would consider ridiculous. Bootstrapping a 3 trillion dollar economy in spite of the government backlash is a real fact of the world. In the next few years, the All Time High marketcaps of many projects and cryptosphere have multiplied.
Imagine a world whee billions of dollars worth investments were poured into the technology that was demonstrated in the NLS Demo. We could have had the modern technology by the time Dot Com Bubble happened.
There is nothing we can do about past other than learning from it. I see great experiments being conducted on blockchains, DAGs and other DLTs. We have to push them towards success. A better world is not going to fall on our laps. We have to act on it. Onboarding more people into cryptosphere and investing in good projects that are trying to march towards a better future is something we can do on our own. Not everyone have to dedicate their lives to innovation. Different people have different skills. At leas we can all learn about and expand inventions to make their impact more pronounced.
