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The mother of all demos

sloan.stanford.edu

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Re: The mother of all demos

#11

Post by [deleted] »

Tihauan wrote: post #6
henrikschroder wrote: post #4

Do not use url shorterners. Do not create a linkbaiting title. That said, the demo by Doug Engelbart from 1968 (which is what you should have used as a title) is very impressive. I saw it ten years ago in my human-computer interaction course, and everyone was completely blown away by it then, and it's still very impressive.

"The mother of all demos" was used for this particular demo by Douglas Crockford in one of his public lectures about Javascript, http://yuiblog.com/crockford/ . I also recommend watching that, btw. Besides the fact that this title is catchy - what's wrong with that? - it also tells more about the content than "the demo by Doug Engelbart from 1968". Surprisingly, not that many people know or care who Doug Engelbart is…

[deleted]

Re: The mother of all demos

#12

Post by glhaynes »

simonw wrote: post #10

Interesting fact: apparently the video was shot by Stewart Brand, who crops up at a surprisingly large number of other key points in the history of computer science (he created the Well, a highly influential early online community, and has some involvement with the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club which gave birth to Apple, among other things). These days he's running the Long Now Foundation. My girlfriend and…

Stewart Brand:

"We are as gods and might as well get good at it" - Whole Earth Catalog (1969)

"We are as gods and have to get good at it." - Whole Earth Discipline (2009)

Re: The mother of all demos

#13

Post by cpr »

simonw wrote: post #10

Interesting fact: apparently the video was shot by Stewart Brand, who crops up at a surprisingly large number of other key points in the history of computer science (he created the Well, a highly influential early online community, and has some involvement with the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club which gave birth to Apple, among other things). These days he's running the Long Now Foundation. My girlfriend and…

Yes, well, other than god delusions, his book on "How Buildings Learn" is great, right up the Alexandrian alley.

Re: The mother of all demos

#14

Post by cpr »

I remember coming across NLS (Englebart's system at SRI) in 1972-73, using it over the ARPAnet (there were about 20 nodes back then). Even then, without much contextual knowledge, and without special graphics consoles, it was clear that this was something special.

In some sense, it's still better than current shared-editing systems, an early and more structured Google Wave, if you will.

Very impressive.

Re: The mother of all demos

#15

Post by arnorhs »

arnorhs wrote: post #5
henrikschroder wrote: post #4

Do not use url shorterners. Do not create a linkbaiting title. That said, the demo by Doug Engelbart from 1968 (which is what you should have used as a title) is very impressive. I saw it ten years ago in my human-computer interaction course, and everyone was completely blown away by it then, and it's still very impressive.

You mean on HN because we won't see the domain next to the link?

Why am I being down voted? I'm trying to understand this guy's opinion. I don't understand why he made that comment, so I was wondering if it was a rule on HN or if he simply didn't like URL shorteners in general.

Re: The mother of all demos

#16

Post by arnorhs »

allenbrunson wrote: post #7
arnorhs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean on HN because we won't see the domain next to the link?

url shorteners are banned on news.yc. i expect pg will eventually get around to banning this one as well, once he's aware of it.

Ok, I didn't know about that. I can understand why they would seem unwanted, even though I don't see a reason to ban them, since I'd think links with shortened URLs would simply not be voted up in the first place...

Re: The mother of all demos

#17

Post by henrikschroder »

arnorhs wrote: post #15
arnorhs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean on HN because we won't see the domain next to the link?

Why am I being down voted? I'm trying to understand this guy's opinion. I don't understand why he made that comment, so I was wondering if it was a rule on HN or if he simply didn't like URL shorteners in general.

Dunno why you got voted down, but it's a rule here not to use them. URL-shorterners are very handy sometimes but here they are completely unnecessary, there's no 140-char limit...

Re: The mother of all demos

#18

Post by henrikschroder »

rbonvall wrote: post #8
Tihauan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The mother of all demos" was used for this particular demo by Douglas Crockford in one of his public lectures about Javascript, http://yuiblog.com/crockford/ . I also recommend watching that, btw. Besides the fact that this title is catchy - what's wrong with that? - it also tells more about the content than "the demo by Doug Engelbart from 1968". Surprisingly, not that many people know or care who Doug Engelbart is…

It always has been called "the mother of all demos": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos :)

Yes, if by "always" you mean less than half of its age...
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