The Mother of All Demos: An Annotated Commentary

Last semester I took a freshman seminar course under Dr. Gardner Campbell about New Media Studies.  in the course we learned about many influential figures in New Media and modern computing in general; one person whose work really stuck out to me was Douglas Engelbart.

He's not a particularly big name beyond being the inventor of the mouse, but his original 1968 tech demonstration, "The Mother of All Demos," contained a lot of very cutting-edge ideas and technologies that would not really be carried out for a long time -- or, in some cases, even up to today.  For example, in the demonstration Engelbart showed a manner of collaborative computing including a rudimentary video chat system; the system also allowed two users to remotely manipulate data cooperatively -- with both users' cursors appearing on the screen.

As my final project for the course, I created a video about Engelbart's presentation, compressing into a few minutes some of the highlights of his 100-minute presentation and tying them to modern-day connections.

Some time after I posted the video on YouTube, my professor Dr. Campbell met with Douglas Engelbart and his daughter Christina and told them about it, it was later recognized on their website.

Here's the link to the video: The Mother of All Demos

And here's the original source material.