"Mother of All Demos" celebration online

Earlier this week was the 40th anniversary of Doug Engelbart‘s “Mother of All Demos,” which is described as:

It was the world debut of personal and interactive computing: for the first time, the public saw a computer mouse, which controlled a networked computer system to demonstrate hypertext linking, real-time text editing, multiple windows with flexible view control, cathode display tubes, and shared-screen teleconferencing.

There was a celebration of this important anniversary last Monday and Tuesday at Stanford down in Palo Alto. I had planned to attend, but sadly, business travel conspired to keep me away.

If you’re interested in such things, here are some resources:

• A poor-resolution video of the original 1968 demonstration, which plays reliably

• A higher-resolution video, but which doesn’t seem to play reliably

• A 40th anniversary discussion by Alan Kay and Andy van Dam, moderated by Joel Orr

I’m sorry that I missed the event — it would have been wonderful to meet Dr. Engelbart, who was there. Even so, it’s great that these resources are on the Web.