The legendary 1968 demo by Douglas Engelbart and his team at SRI — often called “The Mother of All Demos.” That presentation really changed everything.
Back then, people saw computers as machines that only did math — tools for scientists to process data or run calculations. But Engelbart showed a completely different vision. For the first time, he demonstrated the computer mouse, hypertext links, real-time editing, video conferencing, and shared screens — things that sounded like science fiction at the time.
What made this demo so important, in my opinion, is that it turned the computer from a cold calculating machine into a new space for thinking, communicating, and creating. As Terry Winograd mentions in “From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design,” it marked a shift from seeing computers as “machinery” to seeing them as a kind of “habitat” where humans live and collaborate.
Engelbart’s demo helped lay the foundation for interaction design — showing that technology isn’t just about what computers can do, but about how people use them to connect with each other. Every time we move a cursor, click an icon, or share a document online, we’re continuing what started in that room back in 1968.