“Mother of all demos”
How to Change Your Mind“Mother of all demos” names the legendary 1968 San Francisco presentation in which Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a remarkable range of computing technologies. Its significance lies in the contrast between an improvised idea from Engelbart’s LSD session and the consequential tools he later presented to a public audience.
The Demonstration
The presentation brought together the computer mouse, a graphical computer interface, text editing, hypertext, networked computers, e-mail, and videoconferencing. The book describes these accomplishments as demonstrated together in San Francisco in 1968, making the event a showcase for tools and forms of communication that would become central to later computing.
From the Tinkle Toy to the Demo
During his LSD session, Engelbart invented a “tinkle toy” intended to toilet-train children, or at least boys: a waterwheel floating in a toilet and powered by a stream of urine. The idea’s small, comic scale stands in sharp contrast to the technologies associated with the later demonstration. The expression gathers those much larger achievements under one memorable name, while the account preserves the unlikely beginning alongside them.
