History
A demo of someone using a mouse to edit a sentence of text projected huge on the screen with commentary. Very straight- a demo in front of 1000 computer types in December 1968 – but possibly more revolutionary than a lot of what was going on in the streets then. I was especially struck by the demo of simple text editing coupled with the idea of ‘jumping’ to other documents.
The sound track has a strange quality probably because of the echo from the PA system in the hall and because of the beeps and tones the primitive computer terminal (already connected by a network to a remote server) was making.
Jay Cross has collected a range of important books that have influenced thinking about learning and the network, and the graphical user interface is central to our current use of computers.
- Deschooling Society – self organised education and learning webs
- As we may think – hypertext imagined in 1945
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond. How open source software can be built by many hands quickly.
I’d add a few in as follows
- In the beginning was the command line – Neal Stephenson’s essay about Open Source operating systems and the limits of the graphical user interface
- Turn signals are the facial expression of Automobiles Chapter 6: The Teddy – a possible future…
- Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing – the book that first made me realise that the Web is about database report generators.
More Maths materials soon – I’m working on the trigonometry YouTube and the simultaneous equation Hot Potatoes quiz.