In 1968 I was 2 years old. When I was about 10 to 12 years old, I forget exactly, I went on a school trip to an ICL data center to look at the punched card readers and line printers. Even a decade later, Doug's work seemed impossibly futuristic.
In 1984, 16 years after the demo, John C. Dvorak famously wrote of the mouse "There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
Another anecdote: an expensive training class onsite in 1987 at a new Adobe Systems building in Silicon Valley, with Apple/Mac developers well-represented and a few financially successful developers from other OS. The whole class was halted ten minutes in because one of the non-Mac attendees realized the whole curriculum of "developing drivers for Adobe Postscript" was going to be presented using a point-and-click coursework, and called a senior contact at Adobe in to make a scene.. because, you know, a "mouse" ?
It is very interesting that now we start to see trolling and vandalism on that page. No surprise for a public wiki. I published it here to HN instead of tweet just to limit that kind of publicity but encourage people in the community to experiment in the spirit of Doug. That is the best way to celebrate his legacy.
For those internet trolls, no big deal, they will get bored after 15 minutes. To people who think at a little bit longer time scale, that is just noise.
P.S.
This Show HN post was posted yesterday and got no notice. Until it was kindly re-upped
It's 50 years since the demo, and about 18 years later, I wrote short paper introducing the concept of WIMPs to my then boss. Windows, Icon, Menus, Pointers.
14 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 52.5 ms ] threadIn 1984, 16 years after the demo, John C. Dvorak famously wrote of the mouse "There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/1969-demo-interactive.ht...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635733
Anytime if you want to keep a copy, you can save a snapshot copy as gist, such as this one
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/2d20c3b9...
For those internet trolls, no big deal, they will get bored after 15 minutes. To people who think at a little bit longer time scale, that is just noise.
P.S. This Show HN post was posted yesterday and got no notice. Until it was kindly re-upped
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380
Thank you dang!
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/9acd0280...
I think the community can clean it up when things get out of hand. Let's see how it evolves.
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/7ae904ac...
Are we now, this moment, coming to 5:15-5:34? I suspect, and hope, that the eulogist was pointing this toward ARPA and SRI and not me.
Added it to the notebook
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e...
It is best to be watched after watching a few minutes of this cell:
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e...
Here is a link to a section on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=-g5QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT387&lpg=...
Which goes to show the uptake was not that fast.
Boss let me buy Windows v1.02