As in any human group, there are certain pilgrimages, certain rites of passage that all software developers apparently must go through. They are various and equally anecdotical: to compile and boot their own Linux kernel; to read “The Art of Computer Programming” in its entirety (and then send their CV to Bill Gates); to give a presentation in a conference; and finally, to sit through the whole duration of “The Mother of All Demos”, the recording of the unavoidable presentation made by Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, and their team. And this month’s Vidéothèque entry is, precisely, said recording.
There is not a lot that can be said about this demo that has not been said; the references to that event are vast and many of the attendees are still alive. There is a whole Wikipedia page about it; be our guest.
Not only that, but there are countless reports of that demo in literature; the most compelling being “The Dream Machine” by M. Mitchell Waldrop, the subject of this month’s Library issue, which contains a full section in chapter 7 (from pages 280 to 286) aptly titled “ARPA’s Woodstock” dedicated to the session, describing in outstanding detail every step of the demo, but also, providing a funny look behind the scenes (spoiler alert: a lot of sweat was poured by a lot of people to make that event happen).
Another noteworthy example would be Engelbart’s biography in chapter 8 (“The Personal Computer”) of the 2014 book “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” by American biographer Walter Isaacson (of “Steve Jobs” fame).
Instead, and following the style of this magazine, I will be very blunt: “The Mother of All Demos” is a fascinating, albeit quite a tedious video to go through. Why? Well, because we are in 2025, and the world that Doug (everyone calls him that, so I guess we will too) showed in that historical session is… well, in front of you.
Here is the thing: the video describes, at an excruciatingly slow pace (at least by the standards of our generation’s TikTok-formatted brains), with the terms and phraseology of 1968, and during no less than one and a half hours, the very computer you are using to read this article. Yes, the one on your lap or on your desk. Hyperlinked documents, word processors with outlining capabilities, a mouse next to the keyboard, command menus on a “bitmap screen”, live editing with remote participants, and so much more.
I know: booooooooriiiiiing, but with fascinating sound effects all along; every mouse click and command generating its own beep, sometimes putting in evidence the limited computing power available at the moment.
To really appreciate the video, we must understand the context: this was December 1968 (a year we have often referred to as an annus mirabilis in this magazine). Computers had existed only for slightly more than 20 years at this point; the world was aghast after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War was raging and about to get worse; Apollo 8 had not even taken off yet, and I guess Margaret Hamilton was still busy debugging the lunar module code. It might sound stupid to make this point but, hear me out again: computers, back in those days, were not interactive. Most of them where IBM machines, and most of them were fed JCL scripts, triggering the execution of some batch job or this or that COBOL program. Here is a bunch of data in a big file, here is a reference to a COBOL program, please process payroll, thankyousomuch.
The very idea of a “personal computer” providing live feedback to the user was preposterous. Hence, the brilliance and the significance of this recording.
However brilliant, not only did Engelbart had the support of a fantastic team behind the curtain during the demo, he also stood on the shoulder of other giants who, before or simultaneously to him, provided a glimpse into the future. Probably the most notable in this category would be, in chronological order:
- Vannevar Bush’s “Memex” concept, published as part of his memorable “As We May Think” article published in The Atlantic in July 1945.
- The pioneering Whirlwind computer of 1951, built by a team led by none other than Jay Forrester, of later system dynamics fame.
- Ivan Sutherland and his Sketchpad 1963 computer program.
- And last but not least, J. C. R. Licklider, through three specific and memorable contributions: “Intergalactic Computer Network”, “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, and “Libraries of the Future”, published between 1960 and 1965.
Indeed, ours was precisely the future that Doug wowed everyone with that day of December 1968. Pretty much the crème de la crème of the computer world of that day was sitting in the audience watching this moment unfold live. Many of them took these images, these sounds, these interactions, and as a matter of fact, started working on them almost immediately after (most notably at the legendary Xerox PARC, which we have so often written about on the pages of this magazine).
(Well, not entirely. To be fair, Engelbart’s demo did not showcase any online trolls, billionaires co-opting entire social networks to spread fascism, corporations trading private data as if it were corn, state-sponsored malware attacks on public infrastructure, nor other niceties of our modern world.)
The future (computer), actually our future (computer), was outlined on a live presentation in front of a select audience, during the Association of Computer Machinery’s Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, on December 9th, 1968.
In January this year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Douglas Engelbart, who passed away in 2013. This last piece of information yields a quite astonishing insight: he was able to see with his own eyes quite a few wonders during the 45 years that followed the demo. He watched every technology in that session become a mass-market reality, piece by piece, year after year.
Quite a destiny, if you think about it.
What made me smile during this presentation, however, is the fact that this demo carries the germ of the whole field of “Developer Relations” in it. In one way or another, those of us who have been through the initiation rite of speaking in public, we can relate with Mr. Engelbart (and even guess some not-so-obvious traits of nervousness in his face). I got the impression that the preparation and the delivery of this event (both stellar, by all means) set the tone for pretty much every live demo given ever since. I can even tell in the eyes of Mr. Engelbart, at the very end of the session, a smirk of deep satisfaction and gratitude towards the ever-fleeting “Demo Gods” (in uppercase, please), those we all pray to before starting such an endeavor.
Watch “The Mother of All Demos” by Doug Engelbart, Bill English, and team, on YouTube, on the channel of the Doug Engelbart Institute.
Cover snapshot chosen by the author.