CYBERSPACE — The humble computer mouse, both maligned as physically injurious and praised as one of the most important developments of the 20th Century, celebrated its 40th anniversary December 9th.Despite its amazing evolution over the past four decades, the mouse still isn’t the device inventor Dr. Doug Engelbart envisioned it would become. Computer touch screens are the next wave in that evolution, but many observers believe the mouse will continue to be the dominant computer interface well into the future.
The mouse Engelbart demonstrated at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1968 was built by Bill English. The device was made of wood and had only one button, but it embodied such a radical shift in the way people thought about working with computers that one could say it launched the personal computer revolution. For the first time, a visionary had developed an interface that would allow ordinary people to interact with high-tech machinery that, to phrase it bluntly, scared the hell out of them.
Many of the researchers behind the development of the mouse gathered in California on Monday to celebrate Engelbart’s achievement and wish the mouse another 40 years of prosperity. The original project captured the hearts and minds of prominent researchers without even trying. Dr Jeff Rulifson, now director of Sun’s VLSI research group, was among them.
“I met Doug [Engelbart] and got thoroughly enchanted,” Rulifson told the BBC about the pair’s initial encounter at the Stanford Research Institute. “I really understood what he was after. I was blown away by the ideas.”
According to Rulifson, Engelbart’s concept was simple but profound: He wanted computers to become everyday helpers for humans, augmenting their intelligence, efficiency and productivity without requiring specialized knowledge or abilities.
“I think people get fixated on the mouse,” he said. “It’s a symbol they can hang on to, but… There were bits and pieces all around. There was no completely unique set of ideas, but we pulled it all together.”
According to people there at the time, the initial demonstration of the technology was so powerful and so iconoclastic it was like Engelbart was “dealing lightning with both hands.”
In order to demonstrate the mouse’s then-theoretical applications, Engelbart and his team developed a computer system known as NLS to showcase its potential. Although NLS proved too complicated for average users, it formed the underpinnings for the Arpanet, a precursor to the internet.
Forty years later, most of the world still struggles to catch up with the ideas Engelbart gestated.
“Half the vision has come along,” Rulifson told the BBC. “We could see the day when these things [computers] would be small enough to carry about.” Still, “Doug was very frustrated with the stuff that grew up around the PC, because it’s too static and paper-like.”
Today, at 83, Engelbart continues to advance the understanding and use of computer technologies. In 2008 he completed the book Evolving Collective Intelligence. He also continues to serve as the director of the Bootstrap Institute, which he founded in 1988 to promote his Collective IQ philosophy. In 2005 he received a National Science Foundation grant to fund the Hyperscope project, which seeks to increase the ways in which documents and ideas can be linked physically and esoterically.
